Apprenticeship – continued
I also learnt the importance of standing back in order to see the work from far off. Under this informal apprenticeship I picked up innumerable subtle things that are impossible to learn any other way.

Michael encouraged me to start my own carving. I had wanted to work before, but the years at college had introduced so many new ideas, so many styles, so many materials that the millions of possibilities and legions of brilliant predecessors made me not only uncertain of how to proceed, but frozen in panic. Eventually I imposed a set of rules in order to cut down the avenues open to me. For instance, in one sculpture I ruled that the carving should only have convex forms. This revealed more possibilities that I would have imagined and where freedom had been overwhelming, the imposed restriction was liberating. These early carvings were figurative; abstraction didn’t come to me until much later and it came unexpectedly.
William Peers, 2003