Apart from a group of mostly post-card sized watercolours, they are oil on canvas. Some are dense and heavily painted, the surface worked and reworked, some more spontaneous, although throughout the paint is laid on with a vigour and directness that probes the limits between representation and the abstract qualities of paint. Norbert Lynton has written of Finer's painting that:

Some are very dramatic and grave; others shine, gem-like, with the life of coloured marks. I had not expected to need the word 'beauty' in writing about this complex searching art, but my mind's eye is full of it.

Finer is secretive about his way of working. He resists discussion about his aims and methods. We do not know if he makes preparatory drawings or studies but it seems that he knows, or has close human contact with each of them and that this relationship is an inalienable part of his activity as a painter. We may not always recognize each individual feature but they are emphatically vibrant with life and feeling.

Stephen Finer was born in 1949. His work has been exhibited regularly in London and also abroad since the eighties; including prestigious group shows, most notably in the National Portrait Gallery exhibitions The National Portrait Gallery Collects -2003; Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000  -2000-2001; and The Portrait Now -1993. He has work in the permanent collections of National Portrait Gallery ('David Bowie'); Arts Council; British Council and the Contemporary Art Society together with museums and private collections in Great Britain and USA.