Gray matters in cutting-edge art

The Lanark author's paintings figure prominently in the British Art Show, a touring exhibition of artists chosen for their "significant contribution" to British art of the past five years.

His exuberantly coloured works, showing in Glasgow next month, appear alongside those of artists mostly 30 years younger, and in some cases half a century his junior. But a curator described his paintings as "incredibly contemporary".

The youngest name in the line-up is the performance artist Tris Vonna-Michell. Born in 1982, a mere stripling alongside Gray, he will appear live in the show, delivering storytelling performances along with slide projections and text installations.

Gray admitted "some surprise" yesterday. "My style has hardly changed since the 1950s, when I was a late post-Impressionist," he joked.

"I have survived to become avant-garde."

The paintings include works that Gray started three decades ago, and only recently completed. One – called Andrew Gray aged seven, and Inge's Patchwork Quilt – shows the author's young son under a quilt made by his late first wife. It is labelled "Drawn 1972, Painted 2009". Others include typically boldly drawn portraits of a neighbour and model, May.

For the past two years Sorcha Dallas, a leading contemporary art dealer in Glasgow, has been promoting Gray as an artist, and that effort appears to have paid off.

"I'm really excited that he's been represented in this selection," said Ms Dallas. "It's recontexualising his work and getting a critical reappraisal."

While Gray has long been known for his artistic as well as literary skills – he graduated from Glasgow School of Art and has illustrated his own books and plays, staged exhibitions and painted murals – his paintings have been little shown beyond Glasgow.

The British Art Show, staged only once every five years, reaches Glasgow on 28 May after touring to Nottingham and London's Hayward Gallery, before moving on to Plymouth.

The 39 artists include half a dozen Scots, including rising younger stars such as Charles Avery, and Karla Black, recently named to represent Scotland in next year's Venice Biennale.

Curator Lisa le Feuvre said of Gray: "He's an amazing artist and he really seems to be incredibly contemporary, to capture an imagination of a whole generation of artists who are younger than him."

Gray added: "None of the exhibitions I ever arranged for myself in Glasgow ever did well, or even paid for themselves, so I mostly gave up having any."

With new demand, Gray has begun finishing pictures he had stacked up over the years, unsold. Arts Council England recently bought two of them.

Asked to explain his new prominence, he said: "Modesty forbids me to speculate."

The master of many trades in a colourful career

• Alasdair James Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow on 28 December, 1934.

• Aged five, Gray was evacuated to Lanarkshire, drawing on the experience in later fiction.

• Graduated from Glasgow School of Art, 1957, and began staging his own exhibitions from 1959.

• From the 1950s he painted murals in Glasgow homes, churches and synagogues. His unfinished mural in Oran Mor's auditorium is one of the largest works of art in Scotland.

• He worked as a part-time art teacher and scene painter for the Pavilion and Citizens theatres in Glasgow.

• His best-known novel, Lanark, begun in his student days, was published in 1981. The four-part work, hailed as a landmark of 20th century fiction, brought comparisons with Sir Walter Scott.

• After the publication of Lanark, he concentrated mostly on writing, designing and illustrating books.

• Later writer-in-residence and professor of creative writing, along with James Kelman and Tom Leonard, at the University of Glasgow.

• A series of radio and television plays were produced by the BBC in Scotland and beyond.

• His pamphlet Why Scots Should Rule Scotland was published by Canongate in 1997.

• In 2008, his work was shown at the contemporary Frieze Art Fair in London by Sorcha Dallas.

• Work included in the British Art Show, which is touring to Glasgow from 28 May.

• His book A Life in Pictures is due for publication in October.