PINNING art down on a page can be a slippery thing. But you can trust a child to nail it in a sentence. Take this comment in the visitors' book at the front door of the new Rob Ryan exhibition at the Park Gallery in Falkirk's Callendar House. "It's so good," writes nine-year-old Violet, "my eyes were smiling and saying WOW."

The work of London-based Rob Ryan is probably familiar to you, even if you don't know his name. In a digital world which makes it easy to laser-cut any image at the click of a mouse, Ryan's intricately detailed silhouetted paper cuts mix up personal stories within fantastical yet controlled landscapes.

A writer as much as a fine artist, Ryan has been paper-cutting his life onto the four sides of a single sheet of paper using a Swann-Morton 10A blade with a number three handle since 2002. He uses one blade for around 15 minutes and then abandons it.

Recently he has written and illustrated a trilogy of picture books based around an imaginary royal family. Aimed at the inner child which lurks within us all, Scotland's Makar, Jackie Kay said of the first book in the series, The Invisible Kingdom: "Rob Ryan has an eye for the unusual detail and makes you see the world through completely fresh lenses."

Partly to fend off imitators, Ryan – who describes his work as being "like therapy" – joined forces with high street retailer as John Lewis, where his work can be "consumed" on ceramics, tea towels and prints.

He has also collaborated with Paul Smith, Liberty of London, Lulu Guinness and Vogue. His design graces the cover of bestselling fantasy novel, The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly.

In something of a coup, Ryan was persuaded to present his first ever solo exhibition in Scotland by Gillian Smith, The Park Gallery's exhibitions officer. Smith, a long-term admirer of Ryan's work saw his retrospective show, Listen to the World, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park last year.

Love Hasn't Even Got Started Yet (a typical Ryan title) is The Park Gallery's hundredth exhibition since it opened in 2000. The park life surrounding Callendar House suits Ryan's work and the exhibition features a small collection of papercuts, prints and ceramics spanning the last six years of his career. Much of the work is for sale, ranging from £20,400 for a large paper cut to £26 for a tile featuring one of his designs.

There is a mindfulness to Ryan's work which could invite cynics to write him off as sentimental, but it is easy to lose yourself in raw simplicity and beauty of his work, especially in his largest paper cut to date, The Map of My Entire Life (2012).

Ryan lays himself bare with heart-breaking honesty. There is something deeply affecting about the way he creates such a beautiful imagined world and overlays it with the hopes and fears which beset us all.

"Although my work might seem light and carefree," he says. "it's really only a counterweight to relieve my own endless anxieties, more than anything it's about relieving anxieties."

In the car, on the way to Falkirk to see this exhibition, I had been thinking about how exactly 12 years had passed since the death of my father. A long time, yet no time at all.

Ryan's 2013 black and white paper cut, There is Only Time, gave a visual voice to this thought which brought tears to my eyes. With its Victorian sampler aesthetic, it is encased by a border of tiny cut out flowers. A patchwork city sits below an expanse of white sky punctuated by the odd cloud. Birds pull strings on which phrases fly through the air. There is no such thing as work time. There is no such thing as spare time. There is no such thing as the right time. There is no such thing as down time. There is no such thing as quality time… and more.

The phrase which comes to the fore, hovering directly above Ryan's carefully-constructed city of the mind is: There Is Only Time.

If I were you, I would make some time to see this exhibition.

Rob Ryan: Love hasn't Even Got Started Yet, Calendar House, Falkirk, until September 4. www.falkirkcommunitytrust.org