FORENSIC ANALYSIS
The pattern
in the paint.
Across these paintings, the boundary between a figure and its surroundings repeatedly changes. Forms merge, faces emerge and space holds more than one reading.
Artwork entries with altered-state visual markers in a scored forensic analysis. Boundary dissolution was the most frequent feature.
Follow the boundary.
Look at where a face becomes part of another face, or where the outline of a body is also a mark in the surrounding space. This is boundary dissolution: the separation between forms becomes unstable.
In Other Worlds, turquoise figures share marks with the crowded ground. In On The Outside, interlocking faces occupy one suspended mass. The effect takes different forms, but the question of where one thing ends keeps returning.
Figures within figures.
A large shape can contain many smaller presences. In I Am So I Will Be 2, a small standing figure appears within the scale of a portrait. In The Negotiation, hands and heads emerge through overlapping passages of light and colour.
The image asks the eye to move between scales. A face can be a face, a surface and a place to enter.
The scope of the analysis.
The count comes from a scored analysis commissioned for Ryan’s own archive. It describes visual features in that set of 304 entries. It is an analysis of the artwork; the medical evidence comes from the NHS letters.
The letters document narcolepsy and record dream intrusion while painting awake. Read together, the clinical record and the paintings connect a documented experience with a recurring visual language.