Description
Artist: Hunt Slonem
Title: Blue Ascension
Medium: Oil on wood
Size: 26” x 14”
Edition: Original
Inscription: Signed on back
Year: 2019
Condition: Excellent Quality overall with no visible flaws, as it would have left the studio
Documentation: Gallery certificate of authenticity
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Hunt Slonem is best known for his images of bunnies, birds and butterflies. While the bunnies celebrate gestures and birds are focused on color and painterly approach, the butterflies unite his colorist and spiritual aspirations, often creating intriguing visual effects.
For Slonem, painting is a form of meditation and butterflies, a symbol of rebirth and consciousness, one of the most ethereal images he paints. The proclivity for this imagery emerged in his childhood as he watched a butterfly living in an exotic destination, and it continued to this day as one of the most recurring inspirations in his work. Contemplative and engaging, his butterfly paintings explore the widest spectrum of colors in coherence with his signature cross-hatching technique.
“Blue Ascension” butterfly painting represents a celebration of blue against silver that enhances its immaterial properties. We are looking at three couples of butterflies, almost neatly painted in rows, that flutter upwards over a shimmering background. The painting is connected with thin, incised lines of blue, contributing to a particular optical effect that strongly suggests the third dimension. The harmony of the two most celestial nuances alludes to the spiritual concept, while the gestures testify to the painter’s dedication and finesse.
“Blue Ascension” butterfly painting we present shows six butterflies fluttering over a thick layer of silvery paint, enlivened with the Slonem’s cross-hatching marks. The work is signed on the back, in excellent condition and it comes framed in a characteristic, antiquated wooden frame.
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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.