This painting is a career changing painting for the artist. Dean was inspired by a fighter from the St Giles Fair in Oxford, which resulted in a life size depiction of an exhausted fighter slumping on a bench after the match. The fair featured exhibition fights by boxers who would parade up and down on walkways outside their tents, challenging the members of the public to take them on.

“I used a friend from Oxford to pose and apparently I made him run around the block several times to get the desired ‘slumped and exhausted’ effect. Denise applied the make up of someone who had been battered and bruised. It was a time when everything came into alignment and I thought I painted something memorable, mcharged and emotional.”