I Am So I Will Be (2021) Original Acrylic Painting by Ryan Louder

Text scrawled straight across a face, tiny figures standing on the forehead, and a miniature world reflected inside the eyes — this tall portrait is one of the strangest paintings I have ever finished.

I paint with narcolepsy and REM intrusion hallucinations, diagnosed at Guy's Hospital in London. Dream imagery appears while I am awake and turns up in the work without me inviting it. Here the self repeats at different scales — a second smaller face emerging from the neck, star-like marks scattered through a pale ground, diagonal scratch marks interrupting the surface like a broken transmission. The eyes stay cool while everything around them grieves.

It is an oil painting on canvas, 107 x 170 cm, with yellow-green letters worked directly into the lower canvas that never fully resolve into words. The original has sold, but it remains a key piece of the REM intrusion collection and the anchor for the later I Am So I Will Be paintings.

Materials used:

Oil paint

Details:

• Acrylic painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 106.68 x 170.18 x 0.51cm (unframed) / 106.68 x 170.18cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits