Victoria Rees is showing her powerful collection of drawings, paintings and large-scale studio pieces to coincide with the Britten in Oxford festival and tomorrow’s performance by the South Bank Sinfonia of The Young Britten.

The main body of her work has grown out of her collaborative relationship with the Sinfonia and the rock band Jesus Jones. Rees rejoices in the synergy and energy of both sets of musicians, likening the way they perform to the way the sea interacts with the shore, in a series of repetitive movements that produces a unique emotive effect.

Included in the exhibition are large seascapes hung alongside equally large orchestral portraits. Rees sits with the musicians as they practise or perform, capturing their essence by sketching them in outline, in fine ink lines, which when back in her studio she then works up into the final pieces. By completing each piece immediately, and not relying on photographic records, she achieves a powerful emotional accuracy rather than a mere literal one — as in Umberto Clerici cellist in concert, illustrated above, where Rees’s subtle and complex use of ink and blank space captures the intensity of the performance and the collective nature of creating a concert piece.

She is also passionate about applying her art, and the exhibition includes a series of imposing stoles each printed on silk satin and each with a clever rhythmic pattern formed from the component images. The Cellist Stole, created specifically for Garsington Opera’s 2013 season, has a satisfying pattern of a linear nature, which on close inspection reveals itself as composed of many small images of Steven Isserlis and his cello, bordered by a repeated pattern of a Stradivarius cello all set against a molten blue background.

Victoria Rees - Tone: The Sinfonia Drawings is at the North Wall, Oxford, until September 22