To walk along the downstairs corridor in the Oxford Town Hall at the moment is to ramble through old England, an England recorded and celebrated by Derek Cooke, a man who is clearly proud to be a West Countryman and above all, an Englishman. He has spent “many hours wandering on foot and cycling in order to catch the unique light and shadows" of the land he loves.

The exhibition of his paintings, created with great skill and vision over the past 50 years and more is a celebration of the art of someone who, like LS Lowry, kept up the day job (in Derek's case, work as an aircraft designer) whilst taking evening classes in order to refine his first love: the craft of making wonderful pictures.

These are quiet countryside views, often glimpsed across the fields on one of those rambles (A Day out in Burford). And sometimes the landscape breaks into something much more dramatic: a basket-like field of brilliantly orange corn, purple-headed mountains in Cumbria or the sheer reflection of silver light slashing across a lake. Favourites of mine are Dodging the Rain, where two figures in Wellingtons stamp their way through the puddles of a Cotswold lane, and First Fall: cottages snuggling for warmth in a snowdrift.

Derek is now 82 years old and has achieved his ambition to display his pictures publicly in Oxford. More than that, he has generously donated them to the Museum of Oxford's Friends for sale at very reasonable prices. So if you are taken with them, you may find yourself bagging one of these open-air views for yourself.