Artist, designer and educator, Jimmy Cosgrove, is not a man for talking himself up. Usually, he is behind the scenes, quietly making things happen and expanding eloquently on the work of others. Today though, it is all about Jimmy (rarely James) and you can tell this does not sit comfortably on his broad shoulders. We discuss the Glasgow School of Art fire (impossible not to), the last review I wrote for this newspaper and other Glasgow art shop talk before finally getting to the business in hand; his brand new solo exhibition in the House for an Art Lover's Studio Pavilion.

This exhibition, co-curated by two of Cosgrove's former students; Alison Harley and Fraser Taylor, coincides with the artist approaching his eightieth year, and creates an opportunity to showcase his work and process to new audiences.

On the day I visit the Studio Pavilion, it's a week before the formal opening of Looking for Signs: ideas and imagines circumstances and Cosgrove has clapped eyes on it for the first time. Surrounded by examples of work stretching back some 50 years, there's no escaping that – like it or not – this is his moment in the spotlight. "It's quite something to see," he says. "Usually I am concentrating on the thing I am doing now or the next thing so for me to see work going back to the 1960s is overwhelming."

I think he likes it…

Harley and Taylor, working with House for an Art Lover's Louise Briggs, have perfectly reflected the hands-on tactile experience of looking at Cosgrove's designs and paintings. None of the work in this beautiful light-filled small space is framed. There is a hand-made sequential feel to the way it is hung and displayed, starting with funky psychedelic 1970s artwork and moving on to densely worked-on sketchbooks, travel diaries, screen-printed textiles, posters, photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures, collage and text. There's even a couple of hand-painted chairs made by Cosgrove which pay a passing nod to Mackintosh. The final stand-out work in the show is the epic Dyptych X 3, which contains references to sketches Cosgrove made in Morvich and Dun Caan on Raasay in 1976. They sit perfectly in Cosgrove's vividly real and imagined landscape peopled by characters such as celestial twins, Castor and Pollux.

Cosgrove's sketchbooks – or notebooks as he calls them – are the undoubted stars of the show. Looking at them is like shining a torchlight into his mind. Densely packed with notes to self in the forms of poetry, drawings in black and white and paintings in vivid colour, they are a lesson in taking time to look, record and process.

Alongside the sketchbooks are examples of his early experiments with computers; trying to work out how to use them as tools for mark-making. Cosgrove is boyishly enthusiastic about how technology can assist the artistic process and shows me his favourite editing function on his smartphone as we peer into the vitrines at his artistic life laid bare.

"This is not a retrospective," Harley explains, when we discuss the exhibition a few days later. "It's about engaging with Jimmy's process which represents 50 years' worth of work. Fraser and I both felt that his body of work should be recognised. The sketchbooks are a privilege to see. Not many people get to see this record of someone looking and recording close up. We were both surprised that Jimmy allowed us to look through his back catalogue to the extent that we were pulling out work going back decades. It's not every artist who would be so generous."

Generosity is Cosgrove's middle name. Were it not for his leadership, the Studio Pavilion, which sits beside the walled garden in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park, would probably not exist. Cosgrove is a long-time director of House for an Art Lover. He was involved in its very early days of construction in the 1990s when lead architect, Andy MacMillan, then Head of Architecture at GSA was turning Charles Rennie Mackintosh's plans for an "Haus Eines Kunstfreundes” or “Art Lovers House" into a reality. Cosgrove, then Deputy Director of GSA brought in staff and students from the art school – including Harley – to work on Mackintosh's interiors as a research project.

The House's busy ARTPARK Glasgow now hosts exhibitions, masterclasses and workshops with leading contemporary artists and designers and is a prime example of Cosgrove's art-for-all approach. While noodling around online looking for clues to Cosgrove's past life, I found a black and white picture of him on the Glasgow School of Art's archives and collections website taken during GSA's Activities Week, a programme of events which ran throughout the 1970s and into the 1990s. It shows Cosgrove, a young bearded lecturer at the art school, demonstrating screenprinting outside Littlewoods on Sauchiehall Street, surrounded by a large and attentive crowd of passers-by. There's an I-shall-not-be-moved look of deep concentration on his craggy features as he pulls the squeegee across the screen.

Cosgrove had a three-decade long association with GSA. He entered the school as a mature student in 1968 at the age of 28, having had a spell as a map-maker in the army followed by a stint as a telecommunications engineer with the Post Office. He then went on to teach at the art school, firstly as a lecturer in Textile Design from 1973 to 1980 under celebrated designer Robert Stewart (Head of Textiles from 1949 to 1979), then as Head of Department for Printed Textiles from 1980 to 1982, before being appointed Deputy Director; a post he held from 1982 until 2000.

This new exhibition includes examples of significant collaborations undertaken during Activities Week by Cosgrove with leading artists and designers, such as Ian Breakwell, Bruce Lacey and Zandra Rhodes.

An overdue and intimate insight into the diversity of Cosgrove’s mindset as an artist, this show offers a privileged peek into his process, materials and techniques. It's compelling to see how the young engineer studying under post-war design guru Stewart, measures up to the artist today.

What runs though the whole body of work is energy, rigour, hard work, passion and a talent for making marks and creating scenes which take the viewer off into heady mind-mapping of their own making.

One of the bonuses of the exhibition is that is has allowed Harley and Taylor, both respected designers and artists in their own right, to create a beautifully-illustrated publication designed by Glasgow-based design studio, Graphical House, which features texts by the curators, the artist, Frances Robertson and Jimmy Stephen-Cran with Helena Britt. The publication is a visual treat, packed with images of Cosgrove's work, as well as photographs of his studio and home in West Kilbride taken by young GSA graduate, Callum Rice, who has clearly forged a bond with the older artist. As exhibitions go, this one is very Jimmy Cosgrove. Intriguing, densely decorative, collaborative and a joy to behold.

Looking for Signs: ideas and imagines circumstances. A solo exhibition by Jimmy Cosgrove, Studio Pavilion at House for an Art Lover, 10 Dumbreck Rd, Bellahouston Park, Glasgow G41 5BW, 0141 427 9557, www.studiopavilion.co.uk, until September 16, open Tue-Sat, 11am-4pm. Free.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

In 1932, Pablo Picasso had just turned 50. He was an internationally celebrated artist with money, success, several homes, a beautiful wife and a young son. This hard-won success could have made him soft but Picasso, who had lived in poverty as a young artist in Barcelona in the early days of the twentieth century, was never one to rest on laurels. With the critics snapping at his heels and questioning his relevance and his ability to make radical new work, he embarked on "a year of wonders", which witnessed an outpouring of restless creative energy.

The spur behind this gear-change in Picasso's artistic output was a much younger woman called Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom he had met in Paris in 1927 when she was just 17. By the start of 1932, the two had begun a secret relationship and slowly but surely, Marie-Thérèse began to seep into his paintings and sculptures, replacing Picasso's first wife Olga as his muse.

"I paint the way some people write an autobiography," he declared. "The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary." Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy, currently on show at Tate Modern in London, is an exhibition of wonders, featuring 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings, mixed with family photographs and rare glimpses into Picasso's personal life.

Picasso pushed himself to the limits in this year, manically experimenting with studies for larger works, perennially searching for sensual harmony through colour and pushing the boundaries of surrealist distortion. If you are interested in what drives creative genius and the wok of a Modern Master at the peak of his powers, then this is an unmissable treat.

Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy, The Eyal Ofer Galleries, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG, www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern. Until September 9. Open daily. Check websites for admission fees.

DON'T MISS

Alison McWhirter forges lush landscapes, flowers and abstract scenes in oil paint with a light and sensuous touch. Her work – which pulses with erotic charges of colour and deft movement – hovers somewhere between sculpture and painting. Even her signature is carved into the canvas as though it was soft clay.

In the last few years, Glasgow-based McWhirter has attracted the attention of collectors far and wide and this new exhibition of her work at The Smithy Gallery in Strathblane, which opens tomorrow, is sure to attract new admirers.

Alison McWhirter: Wild Love, Smithy Gallery, 74 Glasgow Road, Blanefield, Glasgow, G63 9HX, 01360 770551, www.smithygallery.co.uk, July 29 – August 29. Wed-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun, 1pm-5pm