The artist says: 'By the very nature of my job, I spend much of my time painting the great and the good. Because this year's exhibition is much more representative of people who live and work in Britain today, I felt I wanted to paint someone who lives in the shadow of life. So I put out the word in Oxford that I wanted to get in touch with a thief. Several days later there was a voice on my answering machine. He said he was Simon, a thief, and might be the person I was looking for. When we met for the first of two sittings, he looked the part, although I didn't get the impression that he was one of life's more successful members of the underworld. He was clutching a bottle of whiskey and naked from the waist up. He had given away his shirt to someone on the bus on the way to my studio.