Dilys Finlay-Stephens (b. 1965) portraits are very much influenced by her grandfather, the national American portrait painter Thomas Edgar Stephens, who painted the entire Eisenhower cabinet and later convinced Eisenhower to take up painting as a hobby. He also painted the last life portrait of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. Her portraits concentrate more in depicting her subjects as products of their environment and to paint the cynicism, the sense of humour and pain that has been acquired with life experience and ageing.
Fundamental to all her works is the convincing way in which the artist paints texture and detail, which can be seen especially in her bird paintings.
Dilys Finlay-Stephens' interest in birds came from an early age delving through her father's bird books with lustrous illustrations by Lear and Demartini. Lear’s parrots have had a particularly strong influence. Her giant songbirds explore questions of scale in the ordinary and everyday, the common or garden, and revealing often overlooked elaborate details, enticing the viewer to look more closely.