Hunt Slonem
INTRODUCTION
Hunt Slonem is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He is best known for his neo-expressionist paintings of rabbits, butterflies, and tropical birds, often based on a personal aviary in which he has kept anywhere from thirty to over one hundred live birds of various species.
Hunt Slonem’s artistic career took off at the end of the 1970s at the age of twenty-four, when he had his first individual exhibition in New York.
Today his works are exhibited in more than 250 museums around the world, such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Whitney.
His work is recognized, and collected by kings, queens, sheikhs, princes, athletes, and celebrities such as the Kardashian family, Whoopie Goldberg, Sharon Stone, Gina Gershon, Julianne Moore, Mandy Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson, to mention a few.
BIOGRAPHY
Hunt Slonem was born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine, United States.
As the son of a naval officer, he constantly moved residence as a child. Hunt Slonem lived for a few years in Hawaii and at the age of sixteen, during high school, was an exchange student in Managua, Nicaragua. Hunt Slonem also studied six months at the Universidad de las Americas in Cholula, Mexico, and graduated with a BA in Painting and Art History from Tulane University, in New Orleans. After graduating, Hunt Slonem moved to New York in 1973. This change in residence became a catalyst of creativity, which significantly impacted his artwork, through fashion, color, music, and form.
In Hawaii, Hunt Slonem grew orchids, had birds, and was connected to nature and spirit. Experiences like visiting the Bishop Museum and Queen Liliuokalani's collection of Gothic furniture from Iolani Palace in Hawaii has had a significant impact on his creativity.
In his early days in New York, Hunt Slonem was trying to find his own voice, having studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, he painted landscapes and dabbled in pop ideas. Hunt Slonem had traveled extensively in his early years and collected holy cards in Latin America. He slept with birds around him, hence a series of saints inspired by Saint Francis with a million birds and other animals, which are around this saint.
Slonem’s grandfather was a painter, and his parents always warned him not to be an artist. They used to tell him “Learn to draw and then do what you want," but ever since Hunt Slonem was a child in Hawaii, he made tropical paintings. He even considers himself addicted to painting, assuring that art flows through his veins.
The repetitive production on the obsessive themes of his work is a legacy of Warhol's studio, where Hunt and his brother Jeffrey spent a lot of time in the 1970s and became regular apprentices.
Today his studio is of epic proportions, like most of his stuff. A beautiful place with large windows, a maze of gothic furniture, collectible top hats, colorful bottles, a jungle of orchids and rare plants, and hundreds of paintings of rabbits hang from floor to ceiling, in its unique decorative style.
INSPIRATION
Hunt Slonem considers himself a collector of impressions of his experiences; a collector of treasures such as tropical pants, parrots, top hats, Victorian furniture as well as mansions and an armory. Many of his ideas arise from spirituality and from living surrounded by nature, which is why his work is recognized as something that resonates with people, adhering to this vision one has with art.
In his early years, Hunt Slonem did not have dogs or cats as pets, but birds. Hunt Slonem has always lived in a 40-foot bird cage. At an ashram in India, he helped build a 40-foot aviary and after one of his trips, Hunt Slonem took the back of the brush and began carving into the paint to recreate a cage, which had wires that Slonem wanted to recreate, and carving these wires helps unify the surface of the painting, giving it a contemporary tone.
In the late seventies, Hunt Slonem established his loft in Houston Street, where he filled it with exotic birds and plants as well as a myriad of furniture and antiques, he bought from nearby flea markets. It is evident that being surrounded by these objects impacted Hunt Slonem’s creativity early New York days.
Hunt Slonem is a thinker. Since the early 80's, every weekday morning in his downtown Brooklyn studio, he paints rabbits in oil on wood with antique frames. He does this to clear his mind and get his creativity flowing before painting his other work. It is a Zen gesture.
He has always had a strong metaphysical connection with what he paints. The book “The Psychic Life of Abraham Lincoln” describes, in depth, the devotion to psychic phenomena that he and his wife had. Hunt Slonem finds Abraham Lincoln’s metaphysical connection fascinating, which is why he has made multiple portraits of Abraham Lincoln.
Hunt Slonem also paints Queen Elizabeth portraits. Hunt Slonem admires the head of the English Monarchy because of her way of withstanding all these years of decision-making. He sees her as the last vestige of another world.
Pablo Picasso is a character of particular interest to Hunt Slonem. Hunt Slonem admires his studio, artworks, and houses, and is his favorite artist. Another artist that is remarkably close to Slonem’s heart is Paul Gauguin. Hunt Slonem has expressed that he could cry when seeing his work. He also likes 20th century German expressionism. It is an outburst against the established order of his time, a current that not only transmits social burdens but also the concerns of the artist as an individual.
ART PIECES
Exotic is the word that describes his artistic work, which carries with it the allure of the unknown. The layers of paint reveal something about Slonem's process that is primitive and crude. The colors are sweet to the eye, in a mystical way each color has its own properties of joy and inspiration.
During the 80s Hunt Slonem painted his portraits of New World saints. He painted Saint Niño de Atocha, Saint Martin de Porres, Saint Rose of Lima, Kateri Tekakwitha, and Dr. Gregorio Hernandez. Apart from Slonem's Saints series, he painted Hindu divinities.
His work is recognizable. The figures in his paintings are iconic. Bunnies are one of Hunt Slonem’s favorite subjects and he paints them as fast as they reproduce. Although Hunt Slonem was born “in the year of the rabbit,” according to the Chinese calendar, he insists that these creatures began when painting his Saints series.
His pictorial work has been consistently figurative and decorative; flowing freely between neo-expressionism and fauvism. Large canvases with dense layers of oil paint depict claustrophobic groups of bunnies, parrots, butterflies, and a series of monkey eyes called "Guardian," inspired by Frida Kahlo's paintings of monkeys. Whoopi Goldberg has one of these monkey eye paintings.
Butterflies have always been in his paintings and considers them magical. Butterflies symbolize hope; as one may recall, this insect was the last to be released from Pandora’s box. Hunt Slonem also questions the chaos theory surrounding the “Butterfly effect,” as well as the metamorphosis that each butterfly went through when transformed from a caterpillar.
As said before, Slonem has always been surrounded by birds and many of species are imperiled by
the destruction of their natural habitats, and Hunt Slonem has taken them in for safekeeping
In his homes and studio spaces you can find kookaburras, lories, toucans, hornbills, hammercops, and touracos.
"They talk, they are curious and intelligent. They are magnificent displays of exotic creations and watching them is like watching a dance performance.” – Hunt Slonem
When signing his painting, Slonem only does it on the back. This has to do with snobbery that refers to recognition rather than reading who the artist is, so the signature does not interfere with what the work conveys.
This variety of experiences and narratives in his work have given Slonem a consistent and definitive voice in the conversation about contemporary art.
ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN
Hunt Slonem grew up in big old houses and military officers' quarters. When studying architecture at the University of Louisiana at Tulane he fell in love with the houses of the 1860s.
Slonem has renovated one-of-a-kind residences and historical landmarks. As a conceptual artist, he provokes and challenges our perception of history. His works of art cohabit these places, creating a completely new visual and tactile space that is in harmony.
Among his accomplishments are the restorations of the Lakeside and Albania mansions of Louisiana, Crodt’s Mansion in Kingston, New York, the Scranton Armory, and Charles Sumner Woolworth’s mansion in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In all his homes, Hunt Slonem incorporates his own flora and fauna that co-exist with the likes of 19th century furniture. He transforms these historical monuments into habitable artwork.
