The most visible thing a gallery does for an artist is sell their work.

It may not, however, be the most important thing.

A painting hangs on a wall. Someone falls in love with it. Money changes hands and the painting goes off to a new home. From the outside, it can look as though that is essentially what a gallery does.

But behind every sale there is often a great deal that nobody sees.

Knowing the work

One of the most important parts of my job is knowing the artists and their work.

I need to understand how something was made: the difference between an etching and a collagraph, a reproduction and an original print, the materials, processes and techniques involved.

But I also need to know the stories. Why does an artist keep returning to a particular landscape? Where did an idea come from? Why has their work changed? What matters to them?

Most of the time the artist isn't standing beside their work when somebody encounters it. I am.

Sometimes that conversation is what turns I like that into I understand why I like that.

Remembering people

Gallery work involves an extraordinary amount of remembering.

Someone bought a small print three years ago. Someone stood in front of a painting for ten minutes last summer but couldn't afford it then. Another customer collects hares. Someone has finally found the wall for an artist they've admired for years.

These aren't simply entries on a database. They are relationships built over time.

So when new work arrives, I often already have people in mind. Sometimes encouraging a collector is as simple as saying, I thought of you when this came in.

The conversations nobody sees

A surprising amount of gallery work happens nowhere near the gallery walls.

It might be talking to a greeting card agent because I think an artist's work would translate beautifully into cards. It might be suggesting someone to a magazine, writing a press release, making an introduction to a museum, or saying to another gallery owner, I think you should look at this person's work.

Over my 33 years at the gallery I've helped artists secure greeting card contracts, illustration work, public and private commissions and other opportunities.

Sometimes nothing comes of these conversations. Sometimes something does. Occasionally a small introduction becomes an important part of an artist's career years later.

Helping people live with art

Selling a piece isn't necessarily the end of the job.

We advise customers about framing, hanging, conservation and looking after work. We explain techniques and materials and help people understand what they are buying.

We also help people feel confident about buying original art.

For a regular collector, walking into a gallery may feel perfectly normal. For someone buying their first piece, it can be surprisingly intimidating.

Part of my job is to remove that intimidation without removing the specialness.

Believing in artists

Not everything sells immediately.

Sometimes you believe strongly in an artist whose work takes time to find its audience. You continue showing it, include it in different exhibitions, talk about it, find different ways to introduce it to people and give it time.

That's where trust and commitment come in.

An artist is trusting me with something they've spent years developing. I'm committing space, time, money, reputation and energy to putting that work in front of people. Neither of us can guarantee what will happen.

A good gallery relationship has to be built on that two-way trust.

Making space for an idea

Curating exhibitions is another important part of this.

Sometimes I see several artists approaching an idea in different ways and think, there's an exhibition here. At other times I can see a particular fascination developing in one artist's work and know they need the space to explore it properly.

Those conversations can begin years before an exhibition opens.

An artist may spend a year or two developing a body of work around a landscape, story, technique or obsession. An exhibition gives them a reason to go deeper, knowing there will eventually be a place where the work can be seen together and understood as a whole.

My role is partly to recognise those possibilities: to see the thread, encourage it and eventually build the right context around it.

Visitors see the finished exhibition. They don't see the years of conversations, experiments, emails, studio visits and ideas that came before it.

Sometimes a gallery doesn't simply find an audience for work that already exists.

Sometimes we help create the conditions in which that work can come into being.

Knowing when somewhere else might be better

Artists change, and sometimes helping an artist means recognising that they need something your gallery can't provide.

Someone who began making small, intimate pieces might start producing enormous work that I simply don't have the walls to show. Another might develop a project that belongs in a museum, public building, art fair or completely different kind of gallery.

After three decades in this world, I've accumulated a lot of knowledge about galleries, exhibitions, organisations, art fairs and networks. Inevitably you acquire a certain amount of inside knowledge too: which opportunities might genuinely suit someone and which probably won't.

I think a gallery owner has to be generous with that knowledge.

Sometimes the most useful thing I can say is, Have you thought about talking to these people? I think they might understand what you're trying to do.

That isn't losing an artist. It's doing the job properly.

Watching the longer journey

All of this means that gallery relationships can become very long ones.

There are conversations about prices, presentation, editions, exhibitions and what might come next. There are moments when an artist needs encouragement and others when an honest conversation is more useful.

A good gallery shouldn't try to turn an artist into an easily saleable product. Artists need room to experiment, change direction, get things wrong and surprise us.

At its best, the relationship is reciprocal.

The artist brings the work, ideas, skill and years of practice.

The gallery brings another kind of knowledge: of audiences, collectors, exhibitions, opportunities, presentation, markets and networks.

Somewhere between the two, things can happen that neither could necessarily have made happen alone.

And then, sometimes, we sell something

Of course sales matter. Artists need to earn money and galleries need to earn money. Without sales, neither can continue.

But it's easy, particularly now that an artist can put an image online and sell directly to someone anywhere in the world, to imagine that a gallery is simply a physical place where a transaction happens.

After 33 years of running Masham Gallery, I don't think that's the job at all.

A gallery is part shop, part exhibition space, part storyteller, part matchmaker, part advocate and sometimes part travelling companion.

We hold work physically, but we also hold knowledge about it. We introduce it to people. We remember who loved it. We encourage artists when work takes time to find an audience. We create exhibitions around ideas that deserve exploring. We make connections and sometimes help artists find the next place their work needs to go.

Most of this happens without anybody seeing it.

There isn't a red dot for the conversation with a greeting card agent, the email to another gallery, the introduction that leads to a commission, or the exhibition that began with a conversation two years earlier.

Perhaps that's the unseen work of a gallery.

Not simply selling an artist's work, but believing in it, advocating for it and helping to make a place for it in the world.