My favourite artist

Through the doorway to my left are fifteen completed works of art encased in bubble-wrap and dabbed in white masking-tape. They lean against the wall and assume a kind of threatening pose when you enter the flat. To be frank, they also represent yet another part of our lives which is vulnerable and unprotected. Before the next piece is begun - the wall where the artist works is bare today - she will doubtless take stock. Of the completed works, I believe she is happy with nine of them. (She is too hard on herself, especially when you consider months have been spent on some: this is perhaps why the work is so good.) Fortunately there are some good-quality reproductions of at least nine of the pieces in a transparent plastic folder in my rucksack next to some notes on a particular war zone and a mysterious pair of socks. And because it now falls to me to introduce people to the work, which you could argue I am doing right now, and though I am not a natural salesman, especially when it comes to door-stepping gallerists, cornering collectors, or sounding out critics, I do not for a moment resent the artist her professional shyness. Apart from anything else, it would go against the grain of her essential humility to be pushy now. It seems central to who she is to be who she is, and that person is relatively private and without pretence. She has a kind of point. Why come this far and lie at the very end?