Hunt Slonem Signed Original Bayou Louis Bird Grid Painting, $29,000 Gallery Retail Price

Artist: Hunt Slonem
Title: Bayou Louis
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 36" x 36"
Edition: Original
Inscription: Signed on back
Year: 2012
Documentation: Gallery certificate of authenticity

Bayou Louis presents a vivid reflection of Hunt Slonem's mature artistic language, characterized by saturated color, rhythmic brushwork, and a deep engagement with the natural world. Completed in 2012, this original oil on canvas features one of Slonem's most recognizable subjects, the small birds that appear throughout his oeuvre. Rather than approaching them as literal studies from nature, Slonem renders these forms through intuitive painting, allowing gesture, memory, and atmosphere to shape the composition.

A defining feature of the work is the crosshatched grid that stretches across the surface. This motif echoes the structure of birdcages and creates a visual framework for the lively forms within it. Using a wet on wet technique, Slonem applies and manipulates thick layers of pigment, often carving directly into the paint with his brush. This method produces an intricate surface with raised ridges, subtle incisions, and layered strokes that give the painting a sense of constant movement. The vivid palette of vibrant blues, greens, and contrasting highlights contributes to the feeling of animation that runs throughout the work.

Bayou Louis reflects Slonem's interest in combining repetition, color, and texture to create a meditative and immersive experience. Although rooted in personal symbolism, his approach connects to broader traditions of expressionist and neo expressionist painting through its focus on sensation, emotion, and direct engagement with the medium. Signed on the back and carrying a gallery retail value of $29,000, this painting stands as a significant example of Slonem's continued exploration of nature, spirituality, and painterly technique.

Hunt Slonem Biography

Endless herds of bunnies, kaleidoscopic flocks of birds, all bathed in iridescent hues are what makes Hunt Slonem one of the most attractive contemporary painters today.

Known for his signature imagery and unique lifestyle, Slonem has made an international name for himself by evolving his neo-expressionist manner and creating an inimitable body of work distinguished by his cultural interests, aesthetic and spiritual explorations and vibrant color.

Starting each morning drawing bunnies as a gestural warm-up, Hunt Slonem celebrates the meditative component of painting, treating his work as a deeply spiritual process. He fuses pop art, neo-expressionism and late 19th-century "l'art pour l'art" movement to emphasize bright hues, visual refinement, repetitive motions and his signature cross-hatching technique of painting.

Hunt Slonem - Life

Hunt Slonem was born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine as a son of a Navy officer. He moved often during his childhood and his extended stays in Hawaii, California and Connecticut left a deep mark and a proclivity for exotic destinations. He continued to travel during his studies, living in Nicaragua and Mexico, learning to appreciate different cultures and, especially, tropical settings.

He graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans with a degree in painting and art history and moved to New York in the 1970s. Starting to paint about 1975, he quickly rose to prominence in the contemporary art scene. He was the recipient of several notable grants including the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cultural Council Foundation's Artist Project, for which he painted an 80-foot mural of the World Trade Center. At this time, he also started his 18-year long relationship with the renowned Marlborough Gallery.

Over the years, Hunt Slonem developed his style into a highly idiosyncratic visual language uniting neo-expressionist and pop art concepts and new techniques.

His work was continually shown in unique, contextual spaces and public ambients as well. Simultaneously, he developed a passion for interior design, working independently and in different partnerships, often for charity.

Birds, Bunnies, Butterflies and Abraham Lincoln in Hunt Slonem's Work

The influence nature has on the work of Hunt Slonem is best seen in his subject matter.

His bunnies are a reminder of his childhood pets and a remnant of the emotional connection the artist had with them.

Living in Hawaii and Central America, he was overwhelmed with the fascination for tropical birds - animals he not only paints but also collects. His spacious studio features an aviary housing 40-70 exotic birds at any moment!

Along with butterflies, these subjects are iconic to Slonem's work, representing the mythological and spiritual aspects of his appreciations for bio- and cultural diversity. Simple, aestheticized forms, rarely in focus, flicker and move about the canvas, directing the viewer's attention to the more contemplative, painterly matter of the work - which is repetition, movement and intense pigments.

Along with the ephemeral beauty of nature, Slonem draws great inspiration for history. His portraits of Abraham Lincoln denote him as a prolific pop artist. Inspired by Warhol's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, Slonem interprets one of the biggest historical figures through repetitive meditation, naming it a "form of worship".

Hunt Slonem's Spaces

As history aficionado and an interior designer, Hunt Slonem was drawn to forgotten historic buildings, engaging in their restoration and design. Some of his greatest accomplishments are the restorations of Cordt's Mansion in Kingston, New York; the Lakeside and Albania plantations of Louisiana; and the Scranton Armory and Charles Sumner Woolworth's mansion in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Belle Terre property in South Kortright, New York.

An award-winning artist, Hunt Slonem exhibited internationally since the 1970s. His work was shown in many renowned galleries and museums across the United States, Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

His pieces make part of over 250 prominent museum collections, including collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Würth Museum, the Miro Foundation, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.