Glasgow artist Norman Gilbert on celebrating 65 years of his work

It is this kind of passion and steely determination that has seen the Glasgow artist continue to paint at the ripe age of 89.

Norman, who works from a studio at his home in Pollokshields, is about to unveil a new exhibition celebrating 65 years of his work.

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"It was quite a job choosing what to include," he says, chuckling softly. "There are some gaps, but it goes from the 1950s right up until this year."

His life path has arguably been as colourful as his paintings.

Norman was born in Trinidad to Scottish parents. "My father was a chief sugar engineer and factory manager," he says. "I crossed the Atlantic five times before I was nine.

"That was the 1930s. Everyone sailed back then. No one flew.

"My father went on to India and then Burma. My mother is buried in the Scots kirk in Rangoon."

When Norman was 17, he joined the Navy and served between 1944 until 1948. "I was on the flagship of the Mediterranean fleet HMS Liverpool," he says.

"It was mostly showing the flag and parading. I was a radar plotter. We went everywhere from Casablanca and Sevastopol to Port Said, Gibraltar and Alexandria."

Even then, Norman knew that he wanted to become an artist.

"As we were preparing to demob I remember seeing Henry Moore's Shelter Drawings on a British Council film," he says. "I was tremendously impressed and have never forgotten them."

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An ex-serviceman grant allowed Norman to begin studying at Glasgow School of Art in 1948. It was there that he met his wife Pat, 86, who became an art teacher, and the couple had four sons.

Gaining a foothold in the art world did not prove easy for Norman in those early years.

"It took 15 years from leaving art school until I had my first exhibition," he says.

"In the early 1950s, we lived in a caravan near Newton Mearns where I tended 200 pigs to help pay the bills while I painted.

"I was hawking my paintings around the London galleries and getting nowhere."

A two-page spread in Vogue in 1967 would change all that.

"I went down to London to find 30 of my pictures in the Upper Grosvenor Galleries just off Park Lane," he says.

"It was an exciting time with Carnaby Street and everything going on then. I remember carting 4ft-long paintings around on the Underground."

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Sadly, his joy was short-lived. "I had a second exhibition and was all set to have a third when I discovered the gallery had closed," he says.

"I was suddenly unemployed and had to start at the beginning again."

Sent back to the drawing board, Norman refused to give up on his love for art.

"I have a strong determination," he says. "What kept me going? Well, this is what I don't know. Anyone with some sense would have given up long ago."

He went on to have solo shows at other galleries in London as well as Leeds, Montreal and across Scotland.

In 1974, his work was the subject of a BBC film as part of a series of arts programme called Scope, presented by the critic and writer W Gordon Smith.

Many of Norman's paintings depict his friends and family, although in recent years his work has moved away from human figure for the first time to capturing plants, flowers and trees.

"When the children were younger and around all the time they were an obvious subject for me to paint," he says. "Now it is just my wife and I in the house, I've turned to the back garden where we have different planters including apple and blossom trees growing in barrels."

His distinctive artistic style is unmistakable. "I use a great deal of pattern and all my drawings are purely linear," explains Norman. "I don't use shading or tone.

"That can be terribly demanding because you need to enclose the whole form or shape within a couple of lines. The paintings are all flat colour which is not the Scottish tradition at all."

Throughout his career, Norman believes he has been "absolutely true" to himself.

"I didn't choose this style of art, it chose me," he insists. "It has got me into a great deal of trouble over the years.

"I've had people walk out of galleries saying: 'These are the worst pictures I've ever seen' because they just don't get it. Others have said: 'I wish I had done what you have'.

"I never realised how much against the grain I was going," he adds. "I was described by one art school as 'a dangerous influence to have around'. That's all water under the bridge now."

While public exhibitions are gratifying, Norman says his happiest moments have been spent working in his studio.

"I have a picture on the go at the moment and this is going to be the best one I've ever done," he says. "They are all like that. Whenever I'm working on something new I'm convinced that it is the best ever. I don't care about what has gone before."

In a career filled with highs and lows, Norman isn't one for holding on to regrets. "It is simply the way the cookie crumbles," he says. "I said from the beginning that art was the only thing that would last me a lifetime. Even when I had no sign of anyone exhibiting my work again, it didn't stop me."

His exhibition opens at the prestigious Sutton Gallery in Edinburgh today. Norman may be an experienced hand, but that doesn't stop a few nerves creeping in.

"It is always mixed feelings," he says. "You are like an athlete that trains for years and then the spotlight is turned on you for five minutes. It is the time in between I like best."

Norman Gilbert's exhibition will be at the Sutton Gallery in Edinburgh until July 23. Visit normangilbert.com and thesuttongallery.com