Four long-necked figures appear together: a man and a woman in green-blue hues silhouetted against an orangered background, shielding a pair of children in front. Song Huai-Kuei (1937–2006) painted herself and her family in the late 1960s in Sofia after she and her husband, the Bulgarian artist Maryn Varbanov (1932–1989), had relocated there following their studies, and marriage, in Beijing. The potency of the colors feel creatively elusive, much like
