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”.

The exhibition includes three portraits of Kwok-Wai Lio, one of him Playing the Piano in Pink, one of him playing in blue and one in multiple colours. In each she captures his concentration at the keyboard setting this against a background of shapes and patterns that speak of volume, rhythm and sound.

Steven Isserlis also features in three portraits, including Steven Isserlis, cello with the great man himself in full bowing action, accompanied by the quotations “The bow dances” and “The bow is always working to the dance”. The other two pictures of him feature his head, one with a colleague and the other with someone who is clearly a pupil.

There are two portraits of Thomas Riebla playing viola, one on paper and the other on blue canvas. In both the abstract representation of the musical sound comes to the fore dominating each piece and almost subsuming Riebla and his viola.

The exhibition is open when the college is open; please check with the Porters’ Lodge. It continues until March 10.

Rosalind is also exhibiting throughout this month at the Magic Cafe in Magdalen Road. Cafe People and Other Things features sketches and prints of people she has observed in cafes around the city.