I Am So I Will Be 2 (2022) Original Mixed-media Painting by Ryan Louder

I Am So I Will Be 2 is an original oil painting on canvas, 107 x 107 cm, by London artist Ryan Louder — a close portrait where the eyes stay photorealistic while everything around them dissolves.

A young woman's face is streaked with what reads as tears or paint runs, red lips parted. Text is layered across her face and chest in pink and yellow-green, both covering the skin and emerging from it. A small dark figure stands on her forehead with arms raised. A pale gold door is drawn to her right. Look into the irises and there are interior scenes too small to fully resolve — a miniature world inside each eye. Below her face a second smaller head is barely legible at the neck. The dark brown-green ground absorbs everything beyond the face.

This is part of a body of work shaped by my neurological condition, narcolepsy with REM intrusion hallucinations, clinically confirmed at Guy's Hospital in London. The nested self, the world inside the eye, the figure on the cranium — these are direct recordings of what REM intrusion looks like: the self observed from outside, containing its own interior scenes. The imagery emerges from neurological experience, not metaphor.

I have painted over 2,000 works and sold more than 1,000 originals. The original of this painting has sold, but it remains a key piece of the REM intrusion collection.

Materials used:

Oil paint

Details:

• Mixed-media painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 107 x 107 x 0.1cm (unframed) / 106.68 x 170.18cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits