Painting in egg tempera is an ancient art, and found in paintings and manuscripts in many early civilizations. Egg tempera predated the invention of oil paint. It creates a luminous field of colour, often set on a gold leaf background, and is closer to pastel or fresco than to traditional oil painting. The tempera is a mixture of pigment in a liquid egg binding. Most egg tempera work uses water-soluble pigment in nothing but egg yolk, but egg-and-oil media called ‘tempera grassa’ can also be created using small amounts of oil in the binding.

Dimitris Kolioussis uses two techniques. He paints tempera grassa directly on to historic wooden panels typically up to two metres high, salvaged from mostly early nineteenth century Santorini houses. He also creates more formalised framed paintings using pure egg tempera on treated fabric laid on wood (tempera requires a rigid painting surface and canvas alone is too flexible). The fabric preparation includes cleaning, gluing with a unique adhesive made by the artist, and finally drying, polishing and gilding with pure gold leaf.

Egg tempera paintings have extraordinary longevity. Despite containing an organic binding, tempera paintings over four thousand years old have survived from the early dynastic period in Egypt. Over the last century tempera painting has been revived by many modern artists who have rediscovered its unique visual qualities. Today’s tempera artists include a school of eminent Indian painters, American modernists and reinterpreters of tradition like Dimitris Kolioussis.