His own paintings, however, are quite different. In one work, Afternoon Melody, featuring two young women - one playing a musical instrument, the other holding a cup - we see a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors dominating the lower right quarter of the canvas. Images implying bountiful fruits - grapes and oranges - combine with gem-like squares and triangles. The opposite, upper left corner beautifully balances the bounty with simplicity: a cloud-filled sky broken by and orange/red frame-like corner. The corner also serves to unite the two women, who form a diagonal through the middle of the painting. The faces and hands of the women are in monochromatic blue/gray tones, like a black and white photograph. As in Indian tradition where women are painted with blue skin, explains Varoujan, "the color symbolizes the purity of the women, showing them as goddesses."

While the two women resemble his wife and daughter, Varoujan claims they are more universal. Every artist, he insists, creates images from his own references, develops faces with which he is comfortable and reinterprets them with different hair or eye color as the mood strikes. In another large painting a woman, with a similar pale blue countenance, holds a blue blossom. Below her a profusion of multi-colored flowers cascade down the canvas. In the upper right corner, a fabric backdrop droops to reveal a village suggested by monochromatic shapes resembling a cubist painting. Varoujan explains that the woman isolated from the city of her memories, had chosen the blue flower, the symbol of purity, from all the flower choices in the world. In another work, the younger of the two women from Afternoon Melody reappears. Again, she holds a cup in her hands, but his time she is dressed in red, sitting at a café. Behind her, swirls of shaded colors add a sense of motion that contrasts with her obvious serenity. On the table in front of her sits a vase with a blue rose.