Printmaker Caroline Maas is inspired by locations of personal significance, many of which are in Oxfordshire. Others are further afield: in rural Wales or the industrial cityscapes of the South of England.

Maas says: “ I love to walk and look over vast expanses . . . then I draw. I aim for an equivalence and intensification rather than representation.”

Back in the studio she works from these drawings to create etchings comprised of layered colours on different plates, a process that has been influenced by her background in watercolour and her enjoyment of the element of chance this method brings to the process of making a picture.

Of the 21 pieces in the exhibition a number are different treatments of the same subject, as in Spring Down from Wittenham, Down Wittenham Autumn, (pictured) and Down from Wittenham.

The first speaks of spring with verdant green emphases in the hedging and undergrowth, the second splashed with the rich reds and golds of autumn, and the third uncoloured in which the strong lines and contours, visible from Maas’s vantage point, speak for themselves.

Through her use of colour, shadowy forms and hard-bitten lines Maas creates very powerful and beautiful works of art. But these are also pieces that do not mince their words about the impact man has had on the environment, as he works to control and subdue the natural world.

These impacts are somehow more comfortable when rural and much less so when urban.

In her dark and brooding cityscape Willesden II, Maas presents us with an industrialised space filled with cables, rails and steel, dominated by a smudged smoky building and flanked by red lamp posts, one in which nature has been obliterated.

The exhibition is at the O3 Gallery, open daily and continues until March 18.