In The Moment by Ryan Louder

In The Moment — Oil on canvas board, 50×50 cm

This portrait began as an attempt to catch something that almost never cooperates with a painter: the exact moment a person is fully present. Not posed. Not performing. Not yet aware of being watched. The brushwork here is intentionally loose — fast in places, deliberate in others — because presence itself is like that. It arrives and slips away before you've finished looking.

About the artist's process

I'm a London-based painter living with a clinically diagnosed neurological condition called REM intrusion — verified by a sleep specialist, documented in my medical records. The condition causes dream-state imagery to surface during waking hours. I don't paint inspired by dreams. I paint what I am literally seeing, in real time, as the boundary between sleep and waking dissolves.

That means every portrait I paint is filtered through a perception that is simultaneously awake and dreaming. The figures in my work carry weight beyond their surfaces — they arrive already charged with the quality of the unconscious mind. Collectors and curators who ask what makes a Ryan Louder portrait different from another expressionist portrait: this is the answer. It's provable. It's in my medical file.

Details

• Medium: Oil on canvas board
• Size: 50×50 cm
• Original, unique work — not a print or reproduction
• Signed by the artist
• Ships carefully packaged via tracked courier from London
• Certificate of authenticity included

"In The Moment" is exactly that — one moment, caught by a painter whose perception operates on the edge of two states of consciousness simultaneously.