The Oxford Art Society (OAS) was founded in 1891 and its past alumni include Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Spencer and John Piper. This is its 122nd year and this year’s show continues the society’s long and august tradition.

The exhibition is a substantial one which includes work in a wide range of media: drawing, painting, print-making, glass, ceramics and sculpture. All the pieces in the exhibition are executed to the highest standard and are selected from the work of both members and non-members.

To become a member of the society at the moment you have to have had work selected for two OAS shows. One such artist is Alan Kidd, whose portrait of Autumn at Studley Green, captures both the colours of autumn and the wide open sweep of field and countryside.

A long-standing member of OAS is Patricia Drew. Thirty-plus years ago, Drew came to print-making, after a long and distinguished career in book illustration and teaching.

The prints she makes illustrate things she has read about, seen or imagined. She draws on the wide range of techniques print-making offers, often using more than one technique in a single print in order to give emphasis to and to communicate better, her subject matter.

In The Firebird 4, one of her series of ten Firebirds, the firebird, a magic and distinctly firey linocut, resplendent in vibrant reds and oranges, swoops down towards a dark and shadowy forest comprised of dry-point trees. She was inspired to create the series having seen the designs for Stravinsky’s 1910 operatic ballet at the Diaghilev and Ballet Russes exhibition at the V&A.

Wendy Newhofer uses float (window) glass cut to shape to create clean delicate patterns as in Seeds of Change, with wire sculpting the outline of each seed head. All the colours in her pieces come from the metal leaf she layers between sheets of glass. Once kiln fired the metals take on different hues: for example copper leaf becoming a delicate turquoise blue. A process Newhofer charmingly describes as alchemy in reverse. And this same reverse alchemic magic ensures that no two pieces are ever the same.

Rachel Ducker, originally trained as a jeweller but since then she has developed a successful career as a sculptor working in wire and mixed media. In Untitled, she combines found and foraged wood with wire to create a large free-standing piece in which an erect pensive figure looks down towards the driftwood plinth that supports him.

Each year the OAS annual Open Exhibition makes a substantial contribution to the local art scene. It comes highly recommended.

Oxford Art Society Open Exhibition 2013 at the Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock runs from September 21 until October 13.