Creffield taught Fine Art at Brighton between 1968 and 1981.

He studied at the Borough Polytechnic under David Bomberg from 1948 to 1951, during which time he exhibited as a member of the Borough Group, which included Bomberg and fellow students Cliff Holden, Dorothy Mead, Miles Peter Richmond and Leslie Marr. He later studied at the Slade where he won the Tonks Prize for Life Drawing and the Steer Medal for Landscape Painting.

In 1961 he was first prizewinner in the John Moore's Prize Exhibition at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. In the same year he showed work in an Arts Council national touring exhibition, Six Young Painters. On the recommendation of the eminent art theorist Herbert Read, he became Gregory Fellow in Painting at the University of Leeds from 1964-8 and subsequently had his first solo exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery in 1966.

Creffield is perhaps best known for the charcoal drawings of English cathedrals commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1985, a task he completed by travelling the country in a camper van for two years. He also undertook a major series of drawings of cathedrals in northern France.

His Still Life with Bread and Jug is held in the University of Brighton's Aldrich Collection.