Artist INTERVIEW

Hunt Slonem

Originally printed in Compass, OCtober 24, 2019.

When I think of the work of Hunt Slonem, a New York painter, sculptor and printmaker, I’m reminded of a little Hugh Grant romantic comedy, “Music and Lyrics.” Grant’s character writes pop songs, and in defense of his medium he says, “You can take all the novels in the world, and not one of them will make you feel as good, as fast, as ‘I got sunshine on a cloudy day…’” The Temptations seems like a good comparison to Slonem, whose skill is his skillfully whimsical way of bringing uncomplicated joy to viewers of his Neo-Expressionist art. He is best known for his instantly recognizable bunny series — lively, unfussy strokes that suggest the outline of a long-eared rabbit painted over a pop of neon color and presented in an antique gilded frame. They’re what you might imagine Marie Antoinette would have made if she hung out in Warhol’s Factory.

He is also a collector: of exotic birds, top hats, and even historic homes that he has restored, including the Second Empire-style Cordts Mansion in Kingston, N.Y., an armory in Pennsylvania, and two Louisiana plantations; all transformed into dreamworlds that further reflect his aesthetic, with jewel-toned walls, period portraits of haunted faces hung rising to the ceiling and plenty of accumulated objets d’art lit under grand chandeliers.

Hunt Slonem spoke to Compass by phone in anticipation of an exhibit of his work which will be displayed at Eckhart Fine Art in Kent through Nov. 3.

Alexander Wilburn: I know you have a daily routine where you work on a bunny to warm up your painting each morning. Where are you this morning, and since it’s 11 a.m., what have you been working on so far?

Hunt Slonem: I only paint in my Brooklyn studio. I don’t paint anywhere else but my studio on 53rd Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I’m here five days a week. I painted bunnies this morning. I’m also working on a bigger painting with parrots, but I like to start with smaller paintings.

AW: Are you still using diamond dust in your paintings?

HS: My dealer from Bulgaria gave me the diamond dust. He said, “Use this, I’m giving it to you, Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn.” I had some experience with it years ago, I helped do the diamond dust with Rupert [Jasen] Smith on a Warhol shadow painting, so I was familiar with it, but didn’t really know how to work with it in my way of painting. So we created a resin, and I paint wet paint onto the diamond dust, which is like painting on sandpaper. It’s very sharp, so lots of cuts and wounds along the way.

AW: What keeps you coming back to it then?

HS: I love living with the finished paintings. They change in the light, they reflect light, they never look the same.

AW: Your bunny paintings are often shown framed in clusters, and the rabbit itself is something of a symbol of reproduction and continued life, am I onto something there?

HS: Well, they have a voice. They speak to me as a group, through my mystics and channelers. They want to be taken seriously, they want to be heard. In my lifetime, as a child in the 1950s, women who were pregnant, or thought they were, had the rabbit test. If the rabbit died, you were pregnant. A life was given for every human life. Now we have a bit of consciousness about animal rights and inhumane testing of cosmetics on rabbits. Also, when I was growing up people carried rabbits’ feet as good luck charms. I don’t see much of that anymore. There’s a little bit of growth, knowing these creatures are conscious beings with the right to live on the planet. They’ve also been used in the arts mystically and magically: Harvey the pooka, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, and it’s the Chinese zodiac sign that I am. Certainly rabbits are a joy to observe in the wild. We have them in the yards of all of my houses. It’s thrilling to watch. So innocent.

AW: And the psychics whom you communicate with have steered you toward some of these houses, right?

HS: No, psychics have never steered me toward anything, but they will comment on them. The houses find me, through a myriad of sources. Some I’ve known for 40 years before I’ve bought them, such as Madewood Plantation. I studied it at Tulane in my Louisiana architecture class. It’s Henry Howard’s masterpiece, and for 30 years I just lusted after it. Two years ago it became mine. It’s a huge project, but phenomenal.

AW: And you’ve filled these homes with 19th century furniture.

HS: The houses are works of art in constant states of growth and subtle change. Once we get all the desperately needed parts together, then the fun begins, with color, fabrics, window treatments, buying appropriate furniture and period paintings… It never ends. They’re really installations more than homes.

AW: Because your paintings are so often photographed as collections, do you think of yourself solely as a painter or is it fair to think of you as an installation artist?

HS: I don’t mind being called a painter at all. I’ve wanted to be a painter since I was two years old. And I was very inspired by Picasso buying all these chateaus, filling them up with art and moving on to the next one. I don’t like when people call me a decorator or a designer, because I’m neither. You hit the right nail on the head.

AW: And some of your displayed collections are so singular. I think of your collection of top hats…

HS: I have a big installation coming up in the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Va., at the end of this month, that we’ve been working on for two years, using all of my bits and pieces, furniture and tops hats and wallpaper and fabrics. We brought parts of old buildings and mantels. It’s quite a project. I also do large scale sculptures in Louisiana. I just did a butterfly park sculpture that’s 22 feet tall. I have another one of toucans that’s 20 feet tall on Veterans Boulevard; it’s kind of landmark. And I’ve done a lot of big paintings, the Bryant Park Grill in New York being the earliest. When the place opened Brendan Gill came to interview me, which was a thrill because he’s no longer with us. He wrote a piece for the New Yorker called “Miracle on 42nd Street.” And then I had a big mural in the Trade Center for Port Authority in Tower One, and a big mural at the Hamilton in Washington, and a lot of private ones as well.

AW: When you’re working on a collection is it about pushing an interest as far as it will go? Or is the act of repetition important to you?

HS: Well I’ve always said, if you don’t like something, get a lot of it, it looks better in a group. I never abandon a subject matter. I say mantras on prayer beads, which are called mala, every day of my life. I learned years ago that repetition is divinity. We see things like blades of grass that add up to a whole. Molecules that lead to the blue sky and trees with leaves by the billions and they’re all different but very similar. So nothing is ever really repeated, but the more you say things… Christ once said, “If you write something 800 times it becomes true.” So I’m kind of painting my truth, which is upliftment, a last look at nature… Every day I open my paper and the rain forest is still burning, finally they’re putting it in the news. Why is the rain forest still burning? It hasn’t even been on the front page in months. These are the lungs of the universe; the Garden of Eden; 60 million years of evolution disappearing. Nothing matters. We’re not going to have an environment left or air to breathe. So through my work I’m trying to save nature.

This interview has been edited and condensed.  

“The World of Hunt Slonem,” through Nov. 3. Eckert Fine Art, 12 Old Barn Rd., Unit 1, Kent, CT www.janeeckert neart.com