A man in a broad hat and dark coat sits stiffly on a bench, looking straight out at us, and on his lap rest two owls pressed close together side by side. Shulman paints the whole thing in warm sepia and brown, like a faded old photograph, with grass and the bench dissolving into the pale ground.

The owls, with their round eyes and soft barred feathers, are the heart of it, and the man's serious face above them gives the picture its odd, deadpan humour. He wears laced boots, his hands flat on the bench. Sisters is oil on canvas, 70 by 100 centimetres, from 2017.