Holding On To Fairy TalesLimited edition print Paper Print 
by Ryan Louder

Signal Rating: 9/10 — Strong
Classification: Hallucinatory

This painting by Ryan Louder is part of a body of work shaped by his neurological condition — Narcolepsy with REM Intrusion Hallucinations, clinically confirmed via MSLT at Guy's Hospital, London. The work contains hallucinatory imagery — geometric form constants, phosphene-like patterns, and perceptual structures consistent with REM intrusion.

Neuroaesthetic markers identified: phantom figures — dense tangle of bodies faces hands emerging from single ground; chimeric fusion — multiple figures coalesce into continuous form; figure-ground collapse throughout; pareidolic embedding across entire surface; boundary dissolution; unstable identities — figures continuously reparse; Klüver form constants (lattice)

These markers are not deliberate artistic techniques but direct visual recordings of what REM intrusion hallucinations look like. The imagery emerges from neurological experience, not metaphor. Ryan has painted over 2,000 works, with over 1,000 originals sold. Each painting in this collection has been subjected to neuroaesthetic forensic analysis to identify and catalogue the perceptual phenomena present.

Charcoal or graphite on white paper, worked densely across most of the sheet with marks that accumulate into faces, partial faces, hands, and further indeterminate presences without arriving at a single stable reading. At least a dozen facial configurations can be parsed — profiles, frontal views, half-emergent features — but none holds its boundaries; each is simultaneously another face or a patch of background. The mark-making ranges from tightly modelled passages where a cheekbone or closed eye briefly gains volume, to loose scribbled arcs that function as both armature and obscurement. The overall mass of imagery is centred and dense, thinning only at the sheet's edges where marks become sparse and gestural.

Materials used:

Oil paint

Details:

• Charcoal drawing on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 106.68 x 142.24 x 0.51cm (unframed) / 228.6 x 228.6cm (actual image size)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits

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