Christ Church art history student Elizabeth Brown reflects on the city scene

Would-be art students around the country must be suffering from variously crippling visions of being dumped in decrepit studios — tumbleweed to boot — and told to get on with it, for the cool sum of £9K a year.

Oxfordshire has always been, for better or for worse, exceptional, and not easily changed; often accused of parochialism, Oxford is actually a rich pomegranate on which the Persephe-nous young artists of Oxonia might feed.

Cuts to schools’ arts funding will no doubt take their toll on Oxford’s emerging artists, as well as those who can be discovered nationally; a creative cauterisation which should be mourned and protested against.

But let the young artists of this city make the city work for them as a result; the Oxford art mafia is just as rich a nexus on which to seize as any other of the city’s boasts. It is a spider’s web of history and contemporary local benevolence towards art that makes this city a great one for aspiring artists.

From Christ Church to the Said Business School, it is impossible to resist the serene architecture of the city centre; to feel moved to create purely by means of wonderment at our surroundings would be forgiven.

Further afield, the likes of Blenheim Palace demarcate the county with an elegantly inspirational framework, whilst the like of Freud café-bar, a converted church in Jericho, and the Ultimate Picture Palace in Cowley make up the city’s more conventionally alternative (as it were) haunts.

John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites were drawn to Oxford; their works in the Ashmolean have thus been the bread and butter of the city’s young artists. Ruskin’s legacy extends into our historic university; the Ruskin School is regularly ranked as one of the very best art schools in the country, and the county also offers several highly regarded foundation courses. Artists from both the Ruskin and Oxford Brookes were last year celebrated at Modern Art Oxford alongside other art students from the South-East of England in the ‘Platform’ programme of rolling exhibitions.

Modern Art Oxford, whose 50th birthday is approaching, attracts an ilk of internationally acclaimed artists, giving the budding artists of Oxford a very cosmopolitan art education, whilst at the same time retaining a stubborn local bent — remember that this is a gallery (a former brewery) which once brewed its own beer from hops grown in Rose Hill.

Of recent exhibitions at MAO it is that of Jenny Saville, a fiercely Oxonian artist, which potentially sticks the most in the minds of aspiring artists, who might marvel at how her huge paintings were created in our tiny city. Similarly Christian Thompson, the aboriginal artist who recently exhibited at the Pitt Rivers Museum has deeper connection with the city; humblingly he’s actually a student — albeit for a DPhil — at the Ruskin.

In light of this tangle of artistic connections, it is no wonder that young Oxonians are stirred to create. In a hostile economic environment, and a sink-or-swim art world, blossoming artists would do well to become a bit parochial.