While taking in the Oxford Gallery's current group exhibit, I noted with a smile how perfectly representative the show is of the space-between-seasons borderlands that presently hold us. It feels as though fall hasn't completely given way to winter, and there are some wistful hints of spring on particularly chilly, dewy, early mornings. And all the while, our minds enjoy reveries of summer on the chilliest of days. "Mid-winter Dreams" may be a misleading title for a show that contains artworks celebrating all four seasons, but due to our strange weather of late, it fits.

Karl Heerdt's oil, "Nature's Tapestry," is an atmospheric impression of a stream and brush depicted in delicate, spring pastels. A similar sense of memories pushing through atmosphere is also seen in Sharon Gordon's oil and wax work, "I Vaguely Remember VI," a textural abstract of faded colors resembling perhaps the surface of a map. On the rippled and layered surface, I imagined I could see chains of mountains, but here and there, faces emerge from the panel. Such is the tricky nature of abstracts and memory.

It's often easy to spot the works of students of Steve Carpenter; though each individual artist has his or her own style, Carpenter's students have a tendency to include abstract, organic, and spacey elements. So it is with the soothing, almost spiritual oils of Lynette Blake. This show includes Blake's "Inner Spaces," an amber-gold work with leaves and lines, and the wintery "Oracle," a work in blues that seems to depict the moon above tree branches. Gazing at Bill Santelli's abstract acrylic work, "Light Entering the Darkness," has a similarly calming effect; the mysterious, alchemical work bears fields of crimson, green, white, blue, and black marbling together, like mesmerizing clouds of ink in water.

Artists love to portray people swallowed up by their inner worlds and private thoughts. Masterful painter Thomas Insalaco's "Separation" is an oil on an oval canvas depicting a young woman looking away from us, toward distant car headlights, her golden hair and shoulders picking up every color in the dramatic sunset above. Ryan Schroeder's "White Elephant" is dark where Insalaco's work is filled with light, but just as vibrantly colorful. In a scene painted in oil on an egg-shaped canvas, a man sits next to a nude stripper at table, a pole wrapped in blue lights in the background, a wine glass on the table between us and the pair.

In Leonda Finke's small bronze "Maquette for ‘Woman on a Stool,'" a dramatically pear-shaped woman is balanced precariously on the edge of a wooden block, one knee up, one leg stretched down toward the floor, her body leaning forward, her arms folded behind her back.

Thoughtful parings of artworks can enhance individual pieces. "Jewels" by Barbara Fox is a watercolor of colorfully glowing pears, a winter luxury we perhaps take for granted in this country. Nearby, Wayne Williams's cast bronze "Anjou Pear" is treated with an oily patina, a rainbow of colors dancing over its golden surface.

"Cousins" is a summer-recalling, bright watercolor by Norine Spurling with two young girls swimming in a body of water. Appropriately, on the table under this work sit Christine Barney's "Wave" and "Wavelet," two near-triangles of furnace-formed glass, cut and polished. Yellow, blue, and green ribbons of color stripe through these works, creating the illusion of softly rocking water. A small distance away hangs a chiaroscuro oil, "Swimmer" by Thomas Insalaco, the subject's head emerging from the dark water, the expression intense, the bathing cap like a helmet.

"Windfall" is a breath-taking oil by Charles Houseman depicting pines and boulders in dim light. There is no visible path in this peaceful and wild space, and the scene is dominated by the line of a fallen tree, a giant returning to the earth.

"The Deadfall (Common Crow)" by Ray Easton is a near photographic work in acrylic, the artist's hand hardly shows in his perfectly rendered paintings. The nearly blank, off-white background sets off the off-black crow, beautifully rendered in deep purples and blues, perched on an off-black dead tree in the same purples and blues, with mossy growth under the rough and peeling skin of the tree. The still, contemplative creature seems ready for anything. Another Easton work, "October Morning (Common Loon)" is a photo-real loon breaking the surface of water streakily reflecting autumn colors.

A few vernal works skip us over winter. "Frosty Morning II" is a cheerful oil by Robert Heishman, depicting stands of trees and bushes on a chilly, sunny morning. In Helen Santelli's large oil, "Early Spring Light," literal banks of snow are broken by a diagonally gushing stream bearing last fall's leaves and twigs.

Objects too hint at the inevitable flow of time, or seem to freeze it. "Lace Weave Fragment" is a cast bronze, low and wide basket by Jappie King Black, the green patina adding to the seeming age of the disintegrating relic. Wayne Williams's "Cat on a Rug 1/7" depicts the creature curled, sleeping; the sweetly domestic, epitome-of-cozy moment immortalized in bronze.

"Mid-winter Dreams"

Through January 7

Oxford Gallery, 267 Oxford St.

Tue-Fri noon-5 p.m., Sat 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

271-5885, oxfordgallery.com