Egg tempera on canvas

R. Dugger
Houston

The Square Paintings

Eight paintings, each 24 × 24 inches, made as a single body of work in Placitas, New Mexico.

Digital mockup: Blue Cowboy, After the Thunder, The Last Postman, and Turn West hung in a row on a white gallery wall above a white bench
Digital mockup showing four of the paintings at actual size on a gallery wall.
Blue Cowboy: a man in a pale cowboy hat reads a menu at a table in a cobalt blue room beneath a chandelier
Blue Cowboy
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
After the Thunder: a woman in a dark dress climbs pale stone stairs through orange and violet ground
After the Thunder
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
In an Instant: a gondolier pushes his boat beneath the arch of a bridge, the water broken into yellow and green
In an Instant
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
The Last Postman: a white-bearded man in a dark cap sits at a desk holding a blue folder, against a green wall
The Last Postman
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
A Request: a woman in glasses reads at a table while figures gather in the light behind her
A Request
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
The Lady of Palermo: a woman in a pale sweater turns toward the viewer from a shadowed doorway
The Lady of Palermo
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
Turn West: a small figure walks down a path through a blaze of red, white, and green
Turn West
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
Perfect's World: bare dark trees lean over a still blue stream beneath a pale sky
Perfect's World
Egg tempera on canvas, 24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)

Tap any painting to see it full size.

At scale

On the wall

Each painting is 24 inches square, sized to be lived with: close enough to read the marks of the brush, large enough to hold a wall on its own. These digital mockups show them at true scale.

Digital mockup: In an Instant and The Lady of Palermo hung side by side above a grey linen sofa
In an Instant and The Lady of Palermo, digital mockup
Digital mockup: A Request hung above a wooden dining table with wicker chairs
A Request, digital mockup
The story behind the work

Statement

I think of myself as a colorist, using color to describe light and space but also to carry emotion, and I often flatten or flip foreground and background so that a room, a window, and the person within it become one living surface. My paintings transform a kinetic act into symbolic communication through which I express my personal vision of our world and my experiences within it, in a language of my own creation built from marks, shapes, and the layers that form in the work.

I paint with egg tempera, a centuries-old technique in which pure pigment is mixed into fresh egg yolk in small batches directly on my palette as I work. Because the paint dries almost as soon as it touches the canvas, every decision about color is made in the moment, and the finished paintings keep the freshness and energy of the painting process. Creating these paintings is an ecstatic experience, like dance, like a whirling dervish. I lose myself in the act, and the work takes the lead and tells me where to go, not the other way around.

I have been deeply influenced by the Nabis, especially Edouard Vuillard, and like them, I am drawn to the quiet moments of daily life: strangers pausing before an old church, a postman reading at a desk, a woman resting in a sunlit window. I believe beauty is all around us, and I hope these paintings help elevate beauty in the daily lives of the people who see them.

Don't ask yourself, "What does this mean?"
Ask yourself, "What is happening here?"

In the studio

Painting in real time

In this short film, made in the studio in Placitas, I talk about mixing each color with egg yolk right on the palette as I work, and why that matters to me. After years of oil painting, my paintings had become smooth and almost too perfect, and I had lost the painterliness I loved. With egg tempera none of my colors are ready ahead of time, so I have to stop and think about every color, and every blend, before it goes onto the canvas.

Video, 1 min 32 sec, with captions.
Process

From photograph to painting

The paintings begin with photographs, but the idea is not to duplicate them mechanically; it is to feel the essence of the image and let the painting find its own way. Here are five of the square paintings beside the photographs they grew from.

Black and white film photograph of a gondolier passing beneath a stone bridge in Venice
Photograph, black and white film, Venice
In an Instant, the finished painting
In an Instant
Source photograph for Blue Cowboy
Photograph
Blue Cowboy, the finished painting
Blue Cowboy
Source photograph for A Request
Photograph
A Request, the finished painting
A Request
Source photograph for After the Thunder
Photograph
After the Thunder, the finished painting
After the Thunder
Source photograph for Turn West
Photograph
Turn West, the finished painting
Turn West
A stack of black and white proof sheets fanned out on an orange photo lab envelope
Proof sheets from the photographs behind the paintings, Kodak 5063 TX film
A full proof sheet of black and white photographs from Italy: markets, columns, stairways, a cat, a woman in a doorway
Proof sheet, Italy
The studio at night in black and white: jars of pigment, brushes, rags on the floor, and a large painting in progress behind a wooden chair
The studio in Placitas, New Mexico, at night, with dry pigments in jars beside the easel
The artist

R. Dugger Houston

R. Dugger Houston is a painter living and working in Placitas, New Mexico, whose egg tempera paintings transform quiet moments of daily life into fields of color and pattern in the tradition of the Nabis. He received his MFA from the University of New Mexico (2000) and his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1992), which included a semester of study in Florence, Italy.

Selected exhibitions include the New Mexico Painters Exhibition at the Kennedy Gallery, New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, NM (2024, 2025, and 2026, juried in 2026 by Katie C. Doyle of the New Mexico Museum of Art); the Mountain Plains Contemporary Art Biennial at the Salina Art Center, Salina, KS; the Open Theme Annual at Webster Arts, Webster Groves, MO; Original at The Lab on Santa Fe, Denver, CO; Interconnecting Lines at Artio Gallery, New York, NY; and MasterWorks of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. His work was selected for the Santa Fe Gallery Association's juried Artist Catalog in 2024 and 2025. Houston will present a solo exhibition at the Drew Gallery, New Mexico Highlands University, in 2028.

Self-portrait: the artist in dark glasses against a field of orange, blue, and cream circles
Portrait of the Artist
Egg tempera on canvas
Black and white photograph of the artist in glasses, looking to the side, the source for the self-portrait
The Photograph
Source for the self-portrait