When reflecting on Oxfordshire Artweeks, which finishes this Sunday, each of us will have own highlights. Here I reflect on mine.

They include the work of East Oxford-based visual artist Philippa Redman. She produces beautiful reflective watercolours of still life and some fascinating Cubist reflections on excavations from Thrupp dump. However, the pieces that really sing through are her portraits. These include At the Exhibition and At the Exhibition II. Both of these are oils, painted from digital photographs of TV reportage. In the latter two, gents are framed, either exploring the art in front of them or more likely some murky deal. Whilst in the former, the women are clearly engaged with the art that they are looking at. Redman has also created, again via TV images, a very poignant series of portraits of the individual suffering created by the Haiti disaster of 2010, suffering that continues to this day. She is hoping to stage an exhibition soon, of these moving pieces, to remind of the incalculable impact of such a disaster and the need to support the 2013 re-launch of the Haiti humanitarian appeal.

From Oxfordshire Art Society’s show of its members’ work, I was particularly taken with Annie Wootton’s The Harlequin’s Friends. Wootton works in paper, pulp and wood to produce a wonderful range of 3D portraits of animals and people, in this case both, as the harlequin sits proudly astride his equine friend, with his be-ruffed canine mate perched on the horse’s rear.

The Abingdon MIND Well-Being Service focuses on just that: well-being. Its art group is open to all, meeting each Thursday morning. Their theme this year was Light and Dark, reflected in the use of the colours in each piece and in the reference made to the positives and negatives that exist in us all. In his mixed media work Jazz James uses unusual materials to great effect as in his Barking Mad, where he has used tree bark to frame and enhance a pensive face. Also working in mixed media is Andy Norton whose sculpture, This Mask of Tolerance includes a cast of his own hand holding up a Janus-like mask, light and positive on one side and dark and brooding on the other, the dark side illustrated here.

JASSO (Jewellery and Silver Society of Oxford) welcomed me as they welcome all, be they novices or experienced smiths. The quality of what JASSO members produces is stunning. “One regular member brings back the most exquisite precious and semi-precious stones from India, which he and other smiths incorporate in to fabulous jewellery including titanium rings where they use ‘tension setting’ to hold the stones in an ethereal suspension within the ring. Tutors such as Jeffrey Wallis, guide and support each smith to create their own unique pieces. Wallis himself is both archaeologist and smith, and he rejoices in the location of the JASSO site, on Abingdon’s Peachcroft Farm, adjacent as it is to the Barrow Hills, two lines of Bronze Age and earlier barrows. Jewellery from the site is now in the Ashmolean. Wallis has replicated earrings from the site, in delicate silver, with patterns incised as they would have been by the original jeweller, over 4,000 years ago. These are known as Beaker Earrings: Beaker, because of the characteristic beakers found in the burial mounds. Seven West Oxford artists, provided an interesting exhibition. Collectively known as WocART, they took as their 2013 motif Boundaries, each artist interpreting and expanding the theme via their own particular medium. Helen White used black and white photography to do this as in Desert I, II and III, where the desert’s boundary is delineated by dessicated tree trunks and roots. In his watercolour, Andrew Walker bounds Osney Mill Before Repairs with both the Thames and a barrier of trees, placing this lost iconic jumble of buildings firmly in the past and now beyond reach.

Like all good things, Artweeks has come to an end. However many opportunities continue to exist to both enjoy what others have created or to create oneself: perhaps via the submission of a piece to the Oxford Art Society’s Open Exhibition this autumn, or by joining Abingdon MIND or another community based art group or JASSO.

Or perhaps by continuing to enjoy creating one’s own work, as Philippa Redman and the members of WocART are doing. Visit artweeks.org for full details.