The Injured Dragon by Ryan Louder

The Injured Dragon Signal 9 36x48 oil on canvas.

The stable boy cares for the injured dragon after a fierce battle. The soldier who rode him is carried off on a stretcher either injured or dead. I love the tenderness between the stable boy and the dragon. He dabs his eye with water.
There were no presketches or idea what I was painting till it appeared after a few strokes of burnt umber on the canvas. I see dragons a lot now. I don’t know why. I’m not into computer games of much fantasy stuff outside like game of thrones maybe or the sandman the popular stuff. It just appears as I paint.

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: entire surface populated with densely packed phantom figures — faces, demons, grasping hands; self-luminous forms in electric cyan against darkness characteristic of REM phosphene colouration; figure-ground collapse throughout — no stable negative space; chimeric fusion of figures with environment at every boundary

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.