This Dennis Creffield, titled Birds in Sussex Square, is one of the first oils Dennis produced on moving to Brighton in 1968. His relocation from Leeds after his tenure as a Gregory Fellow came to a close proved to be a pivotal moment in the artist’s life. After a period living in the ‘dourness and grandeur’ of London and Leeds, spirit of Brighton unlocked a newfound freedom in Dennis’s work, unlocking his inner colourist and making his painting more expressive and free. The town itself appealed greatly to Creffield, who noted (in an interview at the time) that it “was still a fine, seedy, romantic place to dwell. This had to do partly with the light which was positively Mediterranean, and partly with the town’s climate of truancy. It was still not a spot to visit with the wife and kiddies but rather with a secret sweetheart.” Creffield’s landscape and figurative paintings, completed during his first dozen years in Brighton, are arguably his least well-known works, but rank as some of his most accomplished.