Artists are popular fodder for the social pages of our magazines. It's easy to think of their world as one big wild party. And, on the surface, Angus Fairhurst might well have seemed to fit. He was always there on the dancefloor. And he cut a pretty dramatic figure.

“He had this wonderful uninhibited freestyle that was quite a spectacle to behold,” said his friend and fellow artist Mat Collishaw. Max Wigram, the gallery owner who curated the Apocalypse show at the Royal Academy, remembers larking about with him, playing catch using the artist Abigail Lane as a ball. “He was the brains behind the YBAs,” Wigram says. “He was the one that the other artists used to go to to write their catalogues, to make sense of what they were doing and put it into words. If Damien Hirst was the Oscar Wilde of that circle, then Fairhurst was the Whistler. Maybe he helped everyone else a bit too much to the detriment of his own career.”

But the sudden and, to many of his friends, terribly bewildering death of this 41-year-old serves as a bitter reminder that life for the YBAs was not just a blast. Fairhurst's body was discovered on Saturday in a patch of woodland near the Bridge of Orchy, a beauty spot in the Scottish Highlands of Argyll. The results of a post-mortem examination have still to be published, but it seems that he committed suicide.

The art world is stunned by the news of his death, though very close friends such as Sarah Lucas, apparently, knew only too well that behind the mask of the joker there were dark recesses of despair. “And he was a very meticulous person,” Collishaw says. “Very bloodyminded. Once he had come up with an idea he followed it right through. He seems to have planned his death down to the last detail.”

Outwardly, Fairhurst seemed the epitome of success. A core member of the incredibly close-knit Goldsmiths art college gang, he exhibited in the landmark show Freeze that, in 1988, kicked off the careers of the ambitiously entrepreneurial YBAs. He was not the most famous member of that pioneering Brit pack. Always self-deprecatory and critical of his own pieces, he lacked the brazen theatricality of Hirst, for example, or the brash confidence of Lucas, his girlfriend for about five years. He collaborated with both of them for his 2004 Tate Britain show In-a-Gadda-da-Vida. “He was a great artist and a great friend,” Hirst says. “He always supported me, in fair weather and foul. He shone like the moon and as an artist he had just the right amount of slightly round the bend.”

Perhaps Fairhurst's profile was more subtle because, as a creator, he seemed less concerned about producing commercially viable objects than pursuing the current of ideas that ran through his head. He painted, sculpted, drew, created installations, put on performances and revelled in practical jokes. His work involved anything from subtly painted patterns to clowning about in a monkey suit. If he played the fool, it was to explore hidden profundities.

Gerry Fox, the film-maker whose documentaries explored the lives of the Brit pack, said that Fairhurst “came at the world slantwise”.

“He took me by surprise,” says the artist Sebastian Horsley. “Success can so often make people sneering and scornful. But when I met Angus he was so soft and gentle. He was poetical. Nowadays that's almost seen as an embarrassment. There was something almost old-fashioned about his sweetness, about his sensitivity and delicacy. It's so easy for people to talk about suicide as a selfish act, but it takes a tremendous courage to act in that way.”

Horsley remembers staying up all night dancing at his studio with Fairhurst and Lucas - who went on to direct a film about Horsley's staging of the Crucifixion. “Angus couldn't understand why Sarah would be interested in a man who dyed his hair black,” says Horsley.

Fairhurst had many high-profile friends outside the art world. Fergus Henderson, the proprietor and chef of St John restaurant, recalled: “He used to have a studio down the road and he'd come down and join me for a teacake and a glass of madeira at 11 o'clock. I think that shows evidence of a special sort of person, that understanding of elevenses.

“Artists and chefs inhabit the same sort of timescale - late nights. I probably knew him as an eater first. His charm and good nature made him a very lovely customer. He had very particular thoughts about food. He loved cobnuts. A very singular chap, calm and wise. I never thought he'd [commit suicide], but he was a chap who thought about things.[] He got to a very dark place which I don't understand.”

“People so often forget that artists aren't just showmen,” says the artist Sue Webster. “So much is measured in terms of money and celebrity. You have a big show - as Angus just did - you give everything to everybody and then suddenly you are sitting all alone in an empty studio waiting for the inspiration for your next work to come. If you are not money-driven, you are left with this terrible emptiness. You are struck by the ridiculousness of it all.”

Additional reporting: Nancy Durrant

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