Hunt Slonem, For Kevin: signed Toucan Drawing in hardback monograph: An Art Rich and Strange, 2002

Hunt Slonem

For Kevin: signed Toucan Drawing in hardback monograph: An Art Rich and Strange, 2002

Signed drawing done in ink on the title page of artist's book

Ink drawing of a Toucan held in title page of the monograph An Art Rich and Strange
signed and inscribed to Kevin
Art Art Rich and Strange
Hardback monograph with dust jacket
Published by Harry Abrams Inc.
Synopsis
Sublimely decorative yet deeply spiritual, Hunt Slonem's work is filled with light and color, with exotic birds and animals, saints and Hollywood stars. His art celebrates the glory of life while underlining the threats that our civilization poses to the natural world.
Donald Kuspit, noted critic and art historian, examines all the myriad facets of this extraordinary artist, including the lush, sensuous environment he has created in his studio over-looking the Hudson River in New York City. The studio is a work of art in itself, filled with hundreds of live birds and with plants, baroque furnishings, and brilliantly hued rooms that house a dazzling array of paintings.
The generous size of the volume and its sensitive, innovative design convey the artist's energy and passion. An illustrated biographical outline, bibliography, and list of exhibitions provide further information. All the works are reproduced in full color in this first full-scale retrospective on the work of a major figure in contemporary art.

Reviews
A splendidly produced book brimming with colorplates befits the art of Slonem, a painter working primarily in oils to create richly gestural, energetically rendered canvases focusing most arrestingly on an atmospheric realm populated by a flurry of macaws and toucans, tigers, chimps, and rabbits. The excitement generated by the artist's powerful oeuvre merits a sentient interpretation, which Kuspit, a prominent critic of contemporary art, deftly provides in a stimulating discourse on artistic concerns that move beyond the decorative. Pointing to Slonem's particular reverence for birds and other creatures, Kuspit engages readers in the metaphorical nature of the work, which includes murals, mixed media sculpture, and characterful portraits of saints and movie stars. In life, Slonem's space is filled with hundreds of real birds and voluptuous furnishings hearkening to another era. In art, Slonem goes beyond the range of unparalleled expressionist colorist Kokoschka. In paintings such as Ocelots (1999), where images of sleek cats meld into a rich impasto of all-over patterning, Slonem's masterful brushwork also speaks volumes on our fragile environment. Alice Joyce

Well-known art critic Kuspit (SUNY at Stony Brook; The Rebirth of Painting in the Late Twentieth Century) presents New York painter Slonem (b. 1951) in an opulent book that reflects the artist's own work. Slonem's numinous paintings reveal the world around him, which includes his vast collection of exotic birds, ocelots, and other wildlife, as well as celebrities, saints, and "higher beings." The bold choice of color and a working toward the spiritual create a strong radiance in the paintings, reproductions of which are large enough to allow the viewer to appreciate the brush strokes, work in situ, and more. Images of the artwork are interspersed with images of Slonem's New York living quarters, giving the reader insight into the daily visual stimulation and lighting that triggers his hand. A short biographical outline, list of exhibitions, selected bibliography, and index of plates are included after the plates themselves. The book is a visual feast, but it lacks Kuspit's usual exacting analysis and criticism, providing only approximately 15 pages of essay text. He chooses instead to let the artwork speak for itself. This first comprehensive retrospective on Slonem is recommended for larger public libraries and those specializing in contemporary art or art history.

Hunt Slonem (American, b.1951) is a renowned painter known for producing Representational imagery and combining Abstract Expressionism. Slonem was born in Kittery, York County, ME. He attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, in 1972, before moving to Tulane University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA, where he graduated with a BA in 1973. Slonem likes to paint tropical birds, and most of these paintings are based on the same birds he keeps in his aviary. He has always had a fascination with birds, even when he was a child living in Hawaii, or during his brief stint as a foreign exchange student in Managua, Nicaragua.

Slonem also likes to fuse mysticism, animal subjects of Islam, and Mexico in his works. Examples of his works include Crested (2005), Amazons (2006), and Two Metals (2012). As a child, Slonem lived in different places including Connecticut, Hawaii, Washington, and Virginia. The experience he had with these different cultures influenced his art greatly. Slonem moved to New York, NY, in 1972, and started experimenting with Nicaraguan holy cards, using them as subjects in most of his works. After visiting India in the 1980s, his work evolved again, becoming even more complex.

Slonem is a gifted artist who has received numerous awards for his works, such as Rotary International Exchange Student, Managua, Nicaragua (1968), Cultural Council Foundation Arts Project, New York, NY (1978), and Stars of Design Award, New York, NY (2009). He has been involved in a number of exhibitions. Examples of his solo exhibitions include those held at Harold Reed Gallery, New York, NY, (1977), Arreesa Gallery, Bombay, India (1987), and DTR Modern, Palm Beach, FL (2010). The group exhibitions Slonem has participated in are numerous too, and they include those held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (1993), Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (1996), and National Gallery of Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria (2009).