Take a Renaissance painting by an Old Master, search the canvas for an intricate detail - a pearl necklace, a tiny piece of pattern on a fabric, or a patch of blue that takes the eye into a landscape that lies beyond the interior - then, having magnified the detail, use it as a starting point for a picture.

This is the way local artist Pam Franklin, from Great Tew, works. But first she prepares a wooden surface with several layers of gesso - a remarkable mixture of rabbit skin glue and chalk - which in Pam's case, is made according to Cennino Cennini's recipe of 1390.

Pam's abstract works are now on show at the Mary Ogilvie Gallery, at St Anne's College, until Thursday, February 28.

The fascinating thing about this, her latest exhibition, entitled Pam Franklin in Detail, is that it permits us to see that her work is in the process of changing character. Pictures showing her established style are on show on the ground floor, while more exploratory works, featuring experiments on flock wallpaper, can be seen upstairs.

To enable visitors coming to her work for the first time to identify her original starting points, she has juxtaposed a picture of their Renaissance sources alongside the finished work.

Pearl Abstract (pictured), for example, is a celebration of a pearl necklace in Madonna of Senigallia, by the early Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. For this, Pam has copied and enlarged the pearl, turning it into a feature in its own right. She has then creatively painted this pearl many times over on the gesso prepared canvas. The result is a stunningly beautiful, yet complex work that offers a post-modern, feminist take on the classics of Renaissance art.

It's the patterened wallpaper that dominates the work displayed upstairs, inspired possibly by the years Pam spent in a decaying red-brick Edwardian house as a student during the 1970s, and those moments when, as a child, she would gaze at wallpaper, sometimes seeing the surface patterns and sometimes looking through it. Pam has left one of these recent paintings unfinished to enable visitors to see just how her work begins and recognise the amount of effort that goes into adding layer upon layer of paint until she obtains the effect she is looking for.

Pam Franklin in Detail is open daily from 10am to 4pm, subject to college commitments. Visitors are advised to phone the college lodge in advance, on 01865 274800, to check that the gallery is open.