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Art

• Natural Worlds: West Ox Arts, Bampton

  Three gifted artists, inspired by nature, have come together to display work in Bampton. Margaret Fitzpatrick was trained in heraldry, hence the meticulous detailing of her botanical watercolours, all of which are enhanced with her innate sense of design. Her Pomegranate Fruit brings to mind the lifelike 17th-century Dutch flower paintings, blemishes and all. Her single dramatic flame-coloured Dahlia, that excludes buds, stems and leaves, totally fills the plane of the paper; the result is stylish and very modern. Her love of gardening suffuses all her paintings of flowers, fruit and vegetables as can be seen in Beetroot, a delectable work, with its deep crimson stem and leaf veins. The garden also informs and inspires Gill Salway’s work. A print and bookmaker, she displays a high degree of precision. For her collagraphs she takes a skeletal leaf, sticks it on to a card, which is then inked and printed to get the reverse image. These prints form part of a concertina. This is made by folding paper which can be opened out to display a set of four painted leafless trees: apple, oak, cherry and whitebeam (above), each tree being paired with its relevant leaf. The result is both educational and attractive. Using the golden shades of autumn her leaf prints display every vein and would enhance any home, while her hand- printed cards offer a personalised greeting. Thula Nicholson and Shaun Robinson derived the name Stick Designs from the initials of their immediate family. Care and excellence is evident in all their work. Using off-cuts, mostly oak, from Shaun’s carpentry and furniture workshop and natural slate from Wales, the products they create for the home are fun, functional and pleasing. Their logo of two foxes is a mark of meticulous craftsmanship, as is their slate board supported by an oak ledge attached to which is a chalk pencil, ideal for messages. Another useful idea is the small board for crushing garlic. read more

• Rosalind Miles: Jacqueline du Pre Building

  The Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building at St Hilda’s College is a highly suitable setting for Rosalind Miles’s portraits of musicians and their music. She explains that her approach was inspired by the time she spent helping at a musicians’ retreat in the heart of Cornwall. And it was there that she determined to draw musicians in such a way that she could capture their personalities and techniques and also reflect the spirit of their music. She was also keen to communicate the feelings that she got from each piece of music as it was played. She does this, she explains, by making quick sketches and letting the pen move into “a kind of dance on the paper”. read more

• Guercino: A Passion for Drawing, the Ashmolean Museum

  You know you are in for something special when you get a frisson of pleasure the moment you see the first pictures in a show. Guercino is one of the great names of 17th-century Italian art. Though his name is not one of the best known, almost forgotten at one point, he was a brilliant draughtsman — and recognised as such very early in his career. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666), known by his nickname Il Guercino or ‘squinter’ due to an early accident, was born in Cento, near Ferrara. In nearby Bologna his work was praised and influenced by the Carracci family (notably, he absorbed their use of light and shade and naturalism). In Rome the young painter’s style was formalised, classicised, but unrestrained energy shows through in his preparatory drawings. There’s no need to see the finished paintings to enjoy them. They satisfy on their own. Their power lies in their brevity. read more

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