AN INSIGHT into the bonds which unite Alasdair Gray and Nichol Wheatley are revealed in two poems which book-end the catalogue for Caught Light, Wheatley's first ever solo exhibition in Kinross.

The two artists were born almost 40 years apart and their friendship teeters between father and son, master and pupil. An illustrated poem by Gray at the front of the publication, written and created for the younger man on the occasion of Wheatley's 40th birthday in January 2011, is an adroit portrait of Gray's younger artist friend.

Sir Midsummer Forty who knows more ways to make pictures than most artists do,

You need all that knowledge to maintain Sue, Lilly, Scarlet, Finn McNeill, Maryhill Studio, Art School and crew of artisans, teachers and pupils who leave no time, no room for the creation of your own pictorial view. Fear not! You give (not sell) our soul to be a Servant of the Servants of the Art – and Me!

I repeat, do not fear. Autumnal Fifty or Fifty Five will ripen your unique fruit when I ain't here,

Alasdair says.

YOUR SEAT IN THE HEAVENLY REPUBLIC IS SECURE

At the back of the book, is Wheatley's poetic response, Poem for Alasdair, which contains the lines:

I am honoured to work with you and will

But I must swing while the iron

Is hot (not knowing if I will strike)

After years of creating artworks for other people, Wheatley – still four years shy of Autumnal Fifty – has finally swung out with his own hot iron. The result is an exhibition of 38 juicy oil paintings and pastel drawings which capture something of the big skies and complex clouds which hang over Wheatley's family home in the nearby Crook of Devon, and beyond. There is also a fine "selfie" pencil drawing which puts the man himself at the centre of it all.

Such is the buzz surrounding the exhibition that before the show had even opened, Wheatley had sold two thirds of the work through word of mouth.

Putting himself in the spotlight finally is a paintbrush-hair short of excruciating for Wheatley despite the fact that for almost two decades, the Glasgow School of Art graduate has been making work which is very firmly out in the public domain.

As well as making art to hang on the walls of commercial clients who own bars, restaurants and hotels all over the world, his work regularly crops up on films and TV dramas. Recently, he painted a mural for the set of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting 2.

Wheatley has worked closely with Gray for the last decade. During this period he has been instrumental in making sure work was carried out on Gray's epic Cycle of Life murals at Oran Mor. He was also the driving force behind the large All Kinds of Folk mural at the city's Hillhead underground station.

As Gray admits, none of these projects would have been realised without the energy, drive and commitment of the younger man.

Wheatley's work is also in the private homes of the rich and famous and he laughs ruefully as he says that he doesn't even have a picture of his best work. In the past, he has signed confidentiality clauses on jobs which would have made him household name had he chosen to blab.

Thankfully, with his courtly air, and gracious demeanour, Wheatley is not given to blabbing. It's almost certainly in the genes. He was born in 1971 into a family of lawyers and politicians. His great uncle, John Wheatley, was Minister of Health in the first Labour government, his grandfather was Lord Justice Clerk.

When he was just eight years old, his art teacher, Mrs Campbell, told his surprised parents that her star pupil would go to her alma mater, Glasgow School of Art, (GSA) when he grew up.

On leaving school, despite securing a place to study law at Edinburgh University, Wheatley followed his gut instinct – and Mrs Campbell’s orders – by studying at GSA for four years.

After art school, he worked as barman, bouncer, chef, blacksmith and labourer. He was labouring on a building site in 1998 when the owner and designer of the project asked him to stop drilling so that they could talk.

Wheatley takes up the story. "They wanted a curved wall – a huge, gentle curve with a painting of a bullfight on it – but they couldn't work out how to do it. So I offered to help. I knew that I could do it. It's just at that moment I didn't know how."

This innate ability to craft something out of nothing and problem-solving ability saw Wheatley being roped in to work on the trickier elements of the interior. This included murals for a basement restaurant in the style of Matisse.

Perfect Circle Art emerged from this experience and this operation, modelled on a Renaissance art studio, grew quickly from a room in his flat in Hillhead to rented premises in Patrick to a big airy studio in Maryhill.

It was in this space that he worked closely with graduates hand-picked from degree shows on projects large and small for a diverse body of clients – including the Hillhead mural with Alasdair Gray.

Following Gray's life-threatening fall in 2015, Wheatley spent several weeks travelling from his home in Kinross into Glasgow to sit beside his friend in hospital.

"Alasdair's been a huge inspiration, and he's a fascinating man," he says. "And he's always still learning, in everything he does."

With this new exhibition of work, as Gray predicted, Wheatley is slowly finding room for the creation of his own pictorial view of the world. Modest to the end, he puts it this way: "This show is my first modest attempt to make my own work. It is very traditional and merely the result of spending a long time looking at various landscapes."

Traditional, maybe. But pretty lush nonetheless.

Nichol Wheatley: Caught Light at The Grouse and Claret, Heatheryford, Kinross, to December 4.

www.nicholwheatley.com