QUIRKY Oxford-inspired cartoons dreamt up by a computer programmer and artificial intelligence expert are on display at a city gallery.

Teacher-turned-artist Jocelyn Ireson-Paine has swapped lectures at Oxford University’s department of experimental psychology for his home studio in Summertown.

There he has been busy making strokes with his special brush pen to create more than 30 humorous cartoons drawn from daily life in the city that play on human interaction with technology.

The result is his first solo exhibition at the Art Café, in Bonn Square.

Mr Ireson-Paine, of Stratfield Road, said: “It’s a sense of fun. I’ve got a large collection of comic books, a lot of Beano annuals and such like and I know I must have been inspired by The Beano.

“Everyone reads The Beano when they’re a child.”

But his appreciation of the comic book art form isn’t confined to his childhood. Mr Ireson-Paine also takes his inspiration from Argentinean cartoon artists and science journal illustrators.

And his experience in the technology industry provides him with plenty of material for his dry humour to work with.

“I do the cartoons for an online computer magazine,” he explained. “The paperless office cartoon is probably the least technical of my cartoons.

“Computing is full of amazing ideas and things that go wrong, both of which are fun to illustrate. I taught Artificial Intelligence at Oxford University, which perhaps explains the robots.”

Mr Ireson-Paine draws the black and white cartoons with a Pentel brush pen and has them printed and framed by the Oxford Print Centre, which has also become the subject of one of his tongue in cheek cartoon jokes.

East Oxford Farmers’ Market, Oxford language schools and Wolvercote also feature in his work.

He said: “I love the brush pen, making strokes with it is very sensuous, and it produces wonderful high-contrast blacks.”

Since leaving the university Mr Ireson-Paine has turned his focus on artistic projects, which have included documenting the day to day life of customers at The Excelsior cafe.

The Excelsior Dialogues chronicled the conversations between the characters at the cafe in Cowley Road in celebration of its 50th birthday last year.

Mr Ireson-Paine’s free exhibition is now on at the Art Café until February 29.