Incollect Magazine - Issue 6

Incollect Magazine 83 “I talk to mystics a lot about bunnies,” the artist Hunt Slonem says, “and one of them once said to me that rabbits would take me to places I have never been. It was true.” He pauses and then adds, wryly, “I am sure you don’t find that credible.” Slonem, at 71, has spent the last five decades producing paintings of rabbits, birds, butterflies, and tropical fauna and flora collected by museums and celebrities alike: the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney, the King of Bahrain, Jay Leno, Sharon Stone, and Whoopi Goldberg. He is eccentric, a maverick with a penchant for owning historic homes — six at the last count, the most recent being Searles Castle, a 60-acre estate with a 40-room, 7-floor mansion from the 1880s located in the heart of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Slonem is busier than ever and shows no signs of slowing down. He is working on a dozen private commissions for clients all over the world along with an exhibition of monumental mosaic-on-metal sculptures (his latest passion) for New York’s Botanical Gardens, which will open in 2024. In the meantime, he has an exhibition in Singapore this summer, and in September a show in London and a museum show in Vienna. Born in Kittery, Maine in 1951, Slonem grew up in New England and later Hawaii where as a child he was introduced to the tropical fauna and flora that have dominated his artwork — and life — for 50 years. “In Hawaii, I saw the Iolani Palace as a child and Queen Liliuokalani’s Gothic furniture. This had a big impact on me along with the natural environment there. I keep birds and have had up to 100 birds of various species at one time including over a dozen toucans and parrots,” he tells me. He has also had, as pets, turkeys, snakes, and monkeys. In addition to his aviary, his homes and art studios are festooned with various orchids and all kinds of verdant tropical plants. Slonen went to school in the South — he earned a degree in painting and art history from Tulane University in New Orleans. He always works in oil paint and prefers to paint on board. “I prefer to paint on wood. I like the way the paint adheres and the way the brush touches the surface. I don’t like the way the brush bounces off canvas but I use it for my bigger works.” He applies many coats of gesso to the board and paints into the wet gesso, similar to the method Previous page: Hunt Slonem. Photo by Charlie Rubin. Hunt Slonem, Pink Ascension (1951), CX1989, 2022. Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Eckert Fine Art. Hunt Slonem, JJS, 2019. Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Eckert Fine Art.