Private Collection
© Estate of Alfred Cohen 2020

From the mid-1960s Cohen’s paintings became more heavily worked, with increased impasto; the paint worked with a palette knife. Philip Oakes explained: ‘He evolved a new style, using paint like a sculptor, laying down slabs of colour, carving it with his brush so that the fields and hedges and houses seemed to be hewn from the canvas’. Many of the best works of this period are small, semi-abstracted and perfectly harmonized compositions, with red or orange sunsets bringing out the warm earth colours, or evocative dusks with deep green foliage:

I found it was practically impossible to paint on a large scale. To present England as it really is you must particularise and paint it in detail. Then what you see and what you record is intimate and truthful not just to the topography, but also to the spirit of the place.