How sculptor John W Mills's days of diving inspired his Pyramid Gallery show

"I started to enjoy the sport in 1948 when I was swimming competitively, competing for London against Schiedam in Holland in a gala celebration at the abdication of Queen Juliana," he recalls.

"I was becoming bored with the training pattern as a free-style competitor, swimming endless lengths of whatever pool my club – the South London Swimming Club –was training at and at whatever meet we were competing in. Holland was pretty in 1948 and the girls were pretty too but the training regime was ‘boring’."

Sculptor John W Mills, his wife Jo and Pyramid Gallery director Terry Brett at the Divers exhibition launch

What happened next, John? "One morning, at an open training session, I saw a group of men obviously enjoying themselves jumping off the diving platform at the deep end of the pool. I approached them to discover that they were members of the Highgate Diving Club, three of them had recently competed for Great Britain at the London Olympic Games," he says.

"Here they were practising their competition dives on a one-metre spring board. I was envious of their freedom and the fact that each time they dived, it was a new experience, because so many thing need to be brought into play, such as balance, physical control, the rhythm of the bouncing springboard and your position in space during the performance of the dive.

"Mastering all these factors calls for repetition of course. Your body memory requires this to key the mental confidence to plan and carry out a particular diving sequence. Once launched from the diving board, the diver is very close to flying."

Invited to try a few basic moves, John soon became a Highgate diver and spent many hours training but was never bored, diving in many competitions, including county championships. "I met a beautiful girl diver, Josephine, at a county competition in that same year, 1948, and we dived together for many years after, taking time off to get married and pursue our careers in the fine arts of dancing and sculpting," he reveals.

One of John W Mills's Divers bronzes, on show at Pyramid Gallery, York

John studied at Hammersmith School of Art from 1947 to 1954 and at the Royal College of Art from 1956 to 1960, going on to enjoy a stellar career as a university professor and sculptor, not least being made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1993.

John's new show, Divers, has opened with perfect timing: the Rio Olympics start next Friday, featuring the likes of 10m platform diver Tom Daley and Ripon's 3m springboard diver Jack Laugher.

Casting an eye over his sculptures, John says: "In a nutshell, diving, dancing, skilful athleticism, female grace and beauty, coupled to masculine power, feature in all my work.

"On a technical point, I like my sculpture to be balanced and stable, so to imply flight in a static form is an interesting conundrum. This is solved in my diving images by resorting to diagrammatic descriptions of the somersault, twisting flights of the divers that can be read as if from a manual of diving instructions."

Divers will run at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate. York, until September 12. On show too is actor and artist Steve Huison's A Year In Bay, a selection of portraits and seascapes from a year's painting at Robin Hood's Bay, running until September 6 alongside ceramics by Michelle Freemantle, Jennie McCall, Katie Pruden and Rob Whelpton. Opening hours are Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm; Saturdays, 10am to 5.30pm, and Sundays, 11am to 4.30pm.