CYRIL WILSON, of Dumfries, who has died at the age of 91, was best known as a distinguished and highly original artist but he had other talents - as a musician, water diviner, and healer.

With his mane of white hair, distinctive orange-coloured suits and shirts, and silver dowsing ball on a chain round his neck, he was a kenspeckle figure, once described as having the air of an Old Testament prophet.

His surrealist paintings are equally eye-catching. Widely exhibited and praised for their power of line and colour, exceptional creativity and energy, they have been very much influenced by the colours and rhythms of Spain and the Mediterranean where he wintered for 30 years.

Wilson left school at 14 and had no formal art qualifications. Born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, he was educated at nearby Bracknell School and his first job was in a builder's office where he helped with architectural drawing. He began to take an interest in painting and in 1938 went to Reading Art School but did not complete the course.

Called up in 1941, he joined the Royal Corps of Signals and was posted to Cairo where he formed a forces' Victory Club and combined teaching art with his military duties.

Wilson's art work flourished at this time and his paintings were exhibited at Cairo Art Club and the American University in Beirut. Among his creations were ivory buttons painted with intricate birds and flowers which were spotted by a hospital matron, a friend of King Farouk, who ordered a set for Queen Farida's wedding dress.

Demobbed in 1947 with the rank of company sergeant major, Wilson was married the following year to Eve Stewart , a Scots girl he had met in Cairo. They settled near Dumfries where they were given a flat by Eve's cousin and her husband who owned an estate. Wilson set up a studio and began exhibiting his work.

He became a guide lecturer for the Arts Council of Great Britain and travelled throughout Scotland. He was also a tutor at the summer schools at Newbattle Abbey in Midlothian and Pendryl Hall, Staffordshire, and lectured at St Andrews University and Dundee Technical College.

In 1954 he became president of the Dumfries Fine Arts Society, a position he held for four years. He continued to hang the pictures and to exhibit at their annual exhibition for the rest of his life. He was elected a professional member of the Scottish Society of Artists in 1955.

As art adviser to the local educational trust, Wilson was responsible for cataloguing its collection and advising on the buying of paintings. One Samuel Peploe which he acquired for (pounds) 130 is now worth at least (pounds) 250,000.

Wilson's wife died in 1954 and at the end of the following year he married Jane Fyfe, also an accomplished artist and musician. They went on holiday to Ibiza in the Balearics. It was the start of a long association with the island and its artists' community. They eventually built a house and studio on the island where they spent every winter from 1959 to 1989.

While his long absences from the Scottish art scene meant Wilson did not receive the recognition he deserved in Scotland, Ibiza provided him with much of the inspiration and driving force behind his work.

His large surreal paintings with titles such as Altar to the Uknown God and Which Head Will You Wear Today? are often puzzling to the uninitiated. He used to explain that while looking at a scene he did not merely fix his gaze on one spot. His eyes darted all over the place and he was conscious of everything around him. The resulting canvas is a kaleidoscope is what he observed.

His work has been described as ''a distillation rather than an abstraction''.

Many of his visionary compositions have a recurring symbolism of seed heads which seem to take on human form. Melanie Landale in her 1995 biography of the artist explains that he saw in the large fennel plants in Ibiza a microcosm of humanity, of seasons of growth, of fruition and decay, of night and day, cold and heat.

''This influence in his paintings transmits a strong sense of human relationships and gestures and actions,'' she wrote. ''He appears to feed on nature and the season cycle. The shapes, colours and even the textures he devises give rise to sensations of pleasure and disquiet, comfort or unease. He can manipulate warm and cool colours in rhythms that carry the eye round the canvas and in this way emotional ideas are clearly communicated.''

The range of Wilson's work was displayed at a retrospective exhibition in Dumfries to mark his 80th birthday in 1991. It ranged from his early representational work - though much of it was lost when his parents moved it into a garden shed to make way for evacuees during the war - to his Henry Moore-style wash drawings, lithographs, and anthropomorphic seed head paintings.

The highly acclaimed show was a fitting climax to a career during which his work had been exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy, the Galeria il Bisonte in Florence, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and many other places. His paintings are included in many public and private collections throughout the world, including those of the Duke of Edinburgh and the late Princess Margaret. Many are on loan to Glasgow University campus in Dumfries.

Wilson's interest in water divining began with a search for wells at his home, Sunnybrae, near Dumfries. He joined the Scottish Society of Dowsers and became president in 1991. His skill was put to good use in Scotland and Ibiza where he traced about 300 wells for landowners. He also became interested in map dowsing - the tracing of water by swinging a pendulum over a map. His favourite pendulum was the silver ball which hung round his neck and which came from a Fuzzy Wuzzy's skirt in Africa.

He was once called in by Scotland Yard to help them find stolen gold bullion and was able to give them a precise location, resulting in an arrest. He also helped police search for stolen jewellery and a gun used in a crime and established the exact place where a teenage girl had been murdered in England.

Like many dowsers, Wilson claimed healing powers. He claimed many remarkable successes both by direct contact and at long distance through transmitting colour by spinning his pendulum over a signature or photograph of the subject. He prescribed different colours for different conditions and even painted healing pictures.

Wilson's other interests were music and scouting. He learned to play the organ at the age of seven and was organist at Kirkmahoe Parish Church near his home. A scout from his schooldays, he was commissioner for Nithsdale in Dumfriesshire and received the silver acorn, one of the movement's highest awards.

He is survived by his wife.

Cyril Wilson, artist; born April 14, 1911, died December 23, 2002.