Thresholds is a great title for an art exhibition put together by a talented young woman who after painting for more than seven years stands at the threshold of a exciting new career as an artist.

Lucy Garnett, from Eynsham, is studying part- time for a degree in Fine Art with De Montford University at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College. The exhibition at the Bartholomew Room last weekend represents the work done since 2003.

Her central picture Thresholds, which is painted in oil on an old oak door (pictured) invites the viewer to walk through the door towards the sea that dances free on the other side. Lucy placed this work next to an etching with aquatint, Oxford, which she sees as being as inaccessible as the sea to most people unless they are prepared to take the plunge and tear down those paper walls surrounding the colleges that they guard so jealously.

Several of her drawings in graphite on paper are drawn from the imagination and are inspired by poems by Ted Hughes. Others, such as Worms’ Head Gower, show rocks that are only accessible at low tide.

Her Footprints plaster casts suggest the journey that she has made during her earlier life to get to where she is now. Each of the full-size footprints has been decorated with miscellaneous objects from the childhood she has now left behind.

The six photographs she included are Self Portraits Through Objects, each highlighting items that have affected her development through adolescence into womanhood — the oboe, a wedding shawl and a ring, a sewing machine, a clog and a sari.

Lucy admits that she has responded to a wide range of stimuli and that many of the works suggest her rite of passage and struggle for identity. This collection is palpable evidence of Lucy’s experimentation and the artistic journey she has made to get to the threshold of a new beginning.