Scotland's most celebrated public artist has launched an outspoken attack on export support for creative businesses, saying that it was "overly complicated", "time consuming", plagued with "box-ticking hurdles" and ultimately "not worth the hassle".

Andy Scott, the creator of the already iconic Kelpies sculptures at The Helix park in Falkirk, made the remarks in a submission to the Scottish Parliament's Enterprise, Economy and Tourism Committee. The committee is gathering evidence for an enquiry into "Internationalising Scottish Business".

Working from a studio in Glasgow's Maryhill, Scott's international commissions have earned around £1.6m for the company he runs with his architect wife Hanneke Scott van Wel. Boosted by global coverage of his 30m-high canal-side horses heads, he is currently working on projects in the US, Germany and Dubai.

As a case study in his submission to the committee, Scott gives a detailed description of his engagement with Scottish officialdom as he attempted to showcase his Kelpies project in the US last year. Creative Scotland, he said worked to "glacial timescales", and Visit Scotland"very frustratingly would not help". The Scottish Government, he said added "very restrictive conditions" to its support in transporting the 1/10 scale models of the Kelpies to New York.

According to the artist, lack of responsive and timely official action prevented him from exploiting offers of exhibition space in Toronto, California, Florida and Georgia. He said "One can imagine the publicity this might have generated, as the sculptures acted as ambassadors for the full-scale project in Scotland... instead the sculptures languished in a storage depot for months until returning to Scotland."

The largest equine sculptures in the world, the Kelpies have generated international press coverage and have been visited by 800,000 people since April 2014. But Scott alleges that the strings attached to its "very generous" offer of £20,000 proved counter-productive.

"[The conditions] related to Scottish Government messaging and PR and bound us to only using their allocated PR company in New York. This caused various problems and challenges and led to only minimal exposure tied to government branding messages and prohibited any wider PR or media coverage. In true Scottish style, we missed an open goal."

A Glasgow School of Art graduate, awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering from Strathclyde University last year, Scott stressed that Scottish bureaucrats have been "nice, polite and reassuring". But repeated demands for him to attend "endless meetings" in Edinburgh in order to "repeat the same message to varying casts of officialdom" were impractical for small businesses to whom "time is money."

"Would I seek assistance from Government for future events in the US or elsewhere, such as our imminent book launch? I doubt it. Experience tells me it's not worth the hassle."

Scott alleges that lack of responsiveness to the needs of small creative businesses resulted in Scotland "missing a fantastic opportunity due to the overly complicated, time consuming box-ticking hurdles that seem to be part and parcel of seeking assistance. Small creative companies must be flexible and quick-witted to respond to opportunities, yet the system that is there to help them seems to move only at the pace of the juggernauts of big business."

Scott's recommendations for reform of exporting support services include a more flexible assessment of criteria for support, dropping demands for "onerous business plans, strategy documents and cashflow projections" which are "not worth the paper they're written on". He also recommends an overhaul of "dull" Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International websites "showing pictures of men and women in suits", and an overhaul of the culture of enterprise support.

"Export seminars are invariably very boring. The official message should be as simple as this: 'get professional help from an accountant and a lawyer, here's the contact details of folks who can help... Now here's some folks who are doing it, to tell you how they're doing it.' [export seminars] will be infinitely more appealing and educational if folks hear speakers who are actually doing it, not bureaucrats paid to talk about it."

The parliamentary investigation which will conclude after Easter, seeks to "understand the challenges and opportunities faced by Scotland's exporters and aspiring exporters, and to assess the extent to which Scottish and UK Government services effectively assist Scottish firms to achieve their full exporting potential".

Others submitting evidence to the export support enquiry include the Federation of Small Business Scotland, SCDI, Scotland Food and Drink, The Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Universities Scotland ADS, an aerospace and defence trade group and Triogen Ltd, a high-tech water purification company based in East Kilbride.