I do not know whether it amused the late George Wyllie (although most things did), but it is passing strange that artists are now admired for working across different disciplines where such behaviour might have been dismissed as identifying a dilettante but a short while ago.

It is certainly true that Wyllie was taken less seriously as a sculptor because he also played jazz double bass, consorted with actors and picked up a ukulele to explain the philosophy behind some of his work. These days Turner Prize winners are almost expected to have musical talent. Richard Wright plays guitar alongside Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson, Martin Creed supported The Cribs at Barrowland last weekend and Susan Philipsz is one of the judges of the Scottish Album of the Year – which had music by Muscles of Joy, a collective of female visual artists, on its longlist.

Glasgow's Adrian Wiszniewski has been similarly multi-faceted of late, although in his own unique way. Originally known as one of the four so-called "New Glasgow Boys" (alongside Ken Currie, Peter Howson and Steven Campbell) when he graduated as a painter from Glasgow School of Art, more recently he has been working in other media altogether. He has made sculptural work in neon. He has collaborated with composer and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra tympanist Gordon Rigby, a neighbour in Lochwinnoch, on pieces for the stage, originally as part of the ever-inventive A Play, A Pie, and A Pint seasons at Oran Mor. He wrote a screenplay, and then adapted it into a novel.

Now, however, Wiszniewski is all about painting again. For the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art – and still showing beyond that programme to May 27 – he had an exhibition of new paintings at Glasgow Print Studio under the title Transcendental Roof Party, part of the gallery's 40th anniversary celebrations. Now open in parallel with that is another show of new work, The Man Who Loved Women, at the National Trust's Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway.

"It is time to roll my sleeves up and get stuck in," Wiszniewski explains. "There were so many things I had to do before I got to 50. I wanted to work in different directions and I've had a complete ball. I've been a student for 20 years and I enjoy challenging myself, but I'm 54 now and it is time to march on with determination"

Wiszniewski has certainly been prolific since he went back into the studio. In February of this year he had a show at the Albemarle Gallery in London's West End, which "did very well" and the GPS and Burns Birthplace shows are also selling exhibitions.

The newest one has its beginnings at the 2009 exhibition at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to mark the Bard's 250th birthday, of which The Herald was media partner. Curator Sheilagh Tennant approached a large number of contemporary artists to produced Burns-themed work and Wiszniewski's contribution was a colour drawing of the ploughman poet with his Highland Mary, the lover with whom he had planned to emigrate to Jamaica.

Tennant is now looking after the gallery programme for the Alloway museum and approached Wiszniewski to amplify his original interest. "I had been very cynical about Burns, having had to sing and recite his poems at school, but when I did the research and got the context it took me back to Lord Byron, who was my starting point when I left art school.

"George Gordon had a Scottish background and was interested in liberty and justice. Both men were attractive to women and dandies of their age."

The painter says he wanted to approach Burns from a female perspective, although Burns hardly comes out of that well. The Highland Mary drawing has become a large canvas, reflecting what Wiszniewski believes was the romantic height of their relationship.

"They were going to go off to Jamaica and she had said her farewells and travelled to Greenock, but that was at the time his success started to take off."

The Man Who Loved Women is at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum to August 27; La Befana by Wiszniewski and Rigby is performed there on May 31 as part of the Burns an' a' that festival.