ADRIAN WISZNIEWSKI paints poetic yet idiosyncratic visions. Big pictures with big impact. Colourful fantasies of sunlit brilliance, overflowing patterns of people and panthers, mythic birds and beasts, the bright beauty of star flowers, trumpet lilies, chalice gold ranunculus, feathery green fronds, furled flags, midnight skinny dipping, and throngs of handsome, poised boys and girls, all, like Dorian Gray, eternally young.

For Wiszniewski has a distinctive, very personal take on life. His world is seen through a kalidoscope of stained glass. His paintings evoke the richness of medieval heraldry or illuminations, a sort of modern-day Book of Hours. Colours glow: intense orange, blood red, shrill lime, hot egg yellow, cobalt, soft velvet violet, grass green, pine green, emerald green, prussian blue, jet-black. His figures wear electric purple pants, lemon yellow shirt, fierce viridian and aqua jumpers, pink ties. Cowboys sport complementary coloured neckerchiefs: red and green, blue and orange. Not a hair out of place on their glossy auburn heads. No blue eye is panicked, no mouth grimaces, no expression is perturbed. All Wiszniewski’s decorous characters face adventure - or misadventure - with calm acceptance, as though they know their story is predestined. As of course it is.

Wiszniewski’s personal myths and imaginings always contained serene, idealised young men and women who play their roles to perfection. His early pictures from the 1980s were from the start full of dreamy innocent creatures, single languid youths inhabiting a peaceful Arcadian landscape. But this new work, on show at the Albemarle Gallery in London for the first time, is composed with more authority, more bravura colour, denser, more determined composition and a more certain, sure hand. Wiszniewski retains his original romantic vision - but family life now intervenes. Where once the male figure dominated the scene, today girls abound, long tresses trailing, lithe bodies - mysterious, seductive - engrossed in what they do. “There are some sexual overtones to these pictures,” confirms Wiszniewski.

And what is that that they do? Where are we being led? What are we being told? We are not sure, and neither is the artist. “I rarely set off with a plan,” he says. “I’d rather take an idea for a walk and see what happens. It keeps my interest! I’ve always worked this way. You draw threads together and create things you didn’t realise you knew. That way I can reveal hidden truths. There is a subconscious element.”

Melancholia is one example. Eight figures make up a large tableau or performance with senior boys entering stage right. A youngster sits on a bed, another hides under it. Cupid waits with his arrow. A spent balloon sits on the floor, with mother, maybe elder sister as onlooker. The turbulent backdrop reinforces the stage setting. What to make of it? Durer’s famous image of the same name features melancholia as one of the traditional four temperaments. But this is a contemporary drama. Is a child ill? Is he getting better? The figures are pensive, sober, but not sad. “It’s a celebration!” explains the painter. “The child recovers.” Ah! Adrian’s famous irony.

More puns, more irony can be found in Reading Allowed, Wild Boys, Three Shepherds and a Wildcat or Two Revolutionaries Whittling and Flagging, all complex in metaphor, lively in abundant symbols, while The Golden Ring, one of my favourites, displays a gentle sensibility against a dense inky nocturnal backdrop.

Always contrary, told not to use the colour black for a hospital picture, Wiszniewski proceeded in the opposite direction. Here many pictures have a black background, all the better to set off crystal clear colour. “I once did a work titled ‘If in doubt use Black’”, he tells me. And adds, “With these pictures I wanted to get rid of any muddiness and enjoy pure colour again. And I admire Manet, Matisse, Chagall and Cadell - they used black too.”

Another large scale oil, Revolutionaries on the Beach includes six male and female readers, writers, visitors, enquirers. The coastal setting is sombre, the sea dense and still beneath a thunder-laden sky. One girl’s solid turquoise blue glove investigates; beaked birds with long tails - surely never seagulls? - make sharp, pointed shapes. A pen hovers over a vial of ink.

The Changeling is composed entirely of women. Images of a masked winged creature, doll-child, doorway and tall church candlestick hint at an annunciation, or possibly merely a setting for Pre-Raphaelite hair and period costumes? The Changeling as subject has inspired many books and films from the original 1622 version onwards. It is a dark story, here transposed by the artist into a less upsetting but non the less memorable image.

More unusual for this artist are a handful of nudes. The title of one, Transexual Roof Party, says it all, while Boy from Carcassonne is intentionally homoerotic. “I’ve always been anti-macho,” he says. Strangely androgynous, innocent yet suggestive, these sweet faced, fine-boned creatures loiter as though in a bower of bliss, happy to be stared at as they calmly pose among rampant, flamboyant vegetation.

Innumerable interlocking shapes personify these new pictures, all created with fluent, flowing, taut, curvilinear draughtsmanship. “Drawing is the basis here. Some were inspired by older drawings, most are brand new. They all have good foundations.” While some narratives puzzle, others are witty puns. He expects his viewers to work at un-scrabbling his stories. It is part of the fun.

For Wiszniewski’s pictures ARE fun. They are entertaining. Rich eye candy with a hidden message or metaphor. He is a lateral thinker and expects us to follow him as he twists, turns and jumps. Here decorative devices and complexity of composition are challenging, with long rigorous lines encompassing sinuous curves, curlicues or arabesques, yet all redeemed by his virtuoso use of colour.

Wiszniewski came to prominence as one of the famous New Glasgow Boys who led the revival of figurative painting in Scottish art in the 1980s. Their international standing was confirmed in 1987 with exhibitions worldwide, plus the acclaimed Edinburgh Festival exhibition, The Vigorous Imagination, held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Wiszniewski first trained as an architect, then as a painter, both at Glasgow School of Art, which has produced so many art world stars in the last 25 years. His Glasgow colleagues Steven Campbell and Ken Curry had an influence. “Steve’s work was very complex and Ken’s organised and inclusive, so I tried to keep mine simple. Use one word instead of twenty!”

A versatile guy, he also has been involved in design, tapestry, ceramics, neon, furniture, stage design, printmaking and lately turned his attention to three plays, three books and performance pieces. In October his novel, Touching Cloth was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. “In Glasgow it’s an accepted thing for painters to write. Think of Alasdair Grey and John Byrne.”

But right now Wiszniewski’s focus is painting, nothing but serious painting. “I’m 50 plus. I’ve done lots of experimenting, hopped around, got everything out of my system. This is my time now.”

CLARE HENRY New York, 2011 Former Financial Times and Herald art critic, 1980-2007, correspondent State UK & Sculpture magazine USA