The DoorwayLimited edition print Paper Print 
by Ryan Louder

Signal Rating: 7/10 — Significant
Classification: Hypnagogic

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 hypnagogic imagery — embedded secondary images, phantom figures, and forms emerging from within the scene.

Neuroaesthetic markers identified: phantom figures (lone figure backlit against luminous halo); self-luminous forms (concentrated halo with no naturalistic light source); spatial impossibility (figure on ambiguous elevated terrain); boundary dissolution (figure merges with dark landscape at base)

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.

Two silhouetted figures — one adult-scaled, one smaller — stand at the base of a passage formed by towering rock faces that rise on both sides and converge toward a blazing yellow-white aperture. The rock surfaces carry purples, pinks, mauves, and dull reds — vivid but not naturalistic, indicating mass without geological accuracy. The ground plane is pale sandy ochre, featureless, offering no spatial information beyond the corridor it describes. The light source at the passage end is pure luminous discharge, the colour of overexposed film. Both figures are entirely in silhouette, reduced to outline, their faces unreadable.

Materials used:

Oil

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 84 x 59 x 2cm (unframed)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: Abstract and non-figurative

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