Thinking Without Words – the title of best-selling novelist, cartoonist and poet Mark Haddon’s first solo exhibition – makes sense.

The 22 pictures on the walls of the Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Summertown, are the result of thoughts expressed through paint, photography and original ideas that have very little to do with the words he usually uses to express himself.

Mark is best known for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and his cartoons which appear in several leading publications including The Guardian and Private Eye.

Now he has turned to colour to make his statements, and it’s colour with a capital C. Indeed, visitors might be advised to take sunglasses with them when viewing this collection.

He says these works are all about the joy of looking and the joy of making vivid and saturated colours, bold shapes and a dynamism that grabs you from the other side of the room, if not the street.

Following David Hockney’s dictum that a painting only works if it grabs you from 50 yards, Mark began putting this collection together.

In the centre of the gallery space sits a papier-mâché sculpture, the only piece devoid of colour. It looks like something out of Dr Who, making it amusing and an object in stark contrast to the rest of his work.

The acrylic work Sleeping on the Roof and Infra Red, a photographic inkjet print on aluminium (both pictured) are excellent examples of his obsession with bright colours and wacky abstract forms. You will notice that the titles have little to do the images. That is intentional. Mark says that choosing a title for a work is as much fun as creating the picture – it’s up to us, the viewers, to get the connection – if connection there be.

Thinking Without Words continues at the Sarah Wiseman Gallery until May 22. It is not to be missed, if you want to view works created by one of today’s most original thinkers.