Martin Puryear / Martin Puryear (born 1941) identified as a painter until he went to Sierra Leone for the Peace Corps, where he was introduced to traditional West African craft and carpentry. He studied printmaking at the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts and later sculpture at Yale, where he learned from prominent Minimalist artists. Puryear distanced his work from Minimalist sculpture, however, rejecting its impersonal and severe nature and reincorporating natural materials and narrative into his work.