In 1978 the Cohens left Kent for Norfolk, where they bought the old school in the village of Wighton (later discovering that Henry Moore had lived there as an art student). They established the prestigious School House Gallery in 1983.
In his late Norfolk phase Cohen continued painting many of his favourite subjects; with more interiors and shopfronts than at any time since the 1950s in Paris. He transformed his technique for the last time, swapping the reworked impasto of the Kent paintings for a flatter, highly patterned surface, often using translucent washes - as in his London pictures, but now applied to bolder, more Post-Impressionist compositions.
In June 1991, having just turned 71, Cohen had a large exhibition at the Fermoy Gallery in the King's Lynn Arts Centre. The critic Tony Warner found the new work 'invigorating', describing how it: 'glows with colour […] There is an obvious joy in the visual world. […] each painting is carefully crafted. Layers of paint build up to an intricate pattern of complementary colours. The structures are worked out with an almost mathematical precision, each part firmly measured against the painting as a whole'.
