Born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine, Slonem spent much of his childhood moving around as a result of his father’s military career. After completing school, Slonem commenced undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, but later graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, with a focus on Painting and Art History. Slonem also took courses at the reputable Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine, where he was exposed to eminent artists from the New York area, including Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine, Richard Stankiewicz and Al Held. During this period, Slonem was encouraged to move to New York to further his art practice, which has become his consistent base ever since.

Slonem has received several grants and fellowships in recognition of his career and is currently exclusively represented by the Marlborough Gallery, New York.

Hunt Slonem Morning Glory 2007 Oil on canvas 84 x 108 inches

Art Interview: You were born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine but I understand that your father was in the military and that your family moved around quite a bit. Where did you spend the majority of your Childhood?

Hunt Slonem: We moved every 2 to 3 years. I lived in Hawaii, Virginia, Connecticut, California and Washington State. My grandmother was from Tennessee in the South, and I always clung to that place for some reason. I wound up buying two old plantations in Louisiana. I love the South as much as I love New York.

Art Interview: Was your mother a housewife?

Hunt Slonem: Yes. Being the wife of a military officer involved a lot of responsibilities in those days. It was very formal. There were still calling cards and required social things. She also spent much of her time doing volunteer work and being in a garden club, that sort of thing.

Art Interview: How were you introduced initially to art?

Sven August Knut Heldner (1888-1954, Sweden/USA) The Pig Woman-A Southern Idyl 1932 Oil on canvas 42 x 40.5 inches

Hunt Slonem: My grandfather painted as a hobby and I was always encouraged to paint. He lived in Minnesota and he used to be the Superintendent of public schools in Duluth, Minnesota. He bought the work of many artists in Minnesota including Sven August Knut Heldner - who later moved to Louisiana. Heldner was married to Colette Pope Heldner (1902-1990) and their works are very much in evidence in Louisiana. They come up for auction all the time. I grew up around painting and my parents dabbled in painting themselves. I was given paints as a child and I wanted to be a painter from first grade onwards. Fortunately or unfortunately it was the only thing I was ever any good at, there were no other career choices available to me. I just love painting - it's in my blood and I don't feel complete without picking up a brush every day. It's the one thing that satisfies me completely,

Art Interview: I assume you came out of a fairly affluent family?

Hunt Slonem: I would say that we were upper-middle class, but I did have relatives with houses in Rhode Island that were large enough for me to get lost in. So, there was some affluence there. I couldn't see the differences when I grew up.

Art Interview: What was the reaction of your family when they realized you were heading towards a career in the arts?

Hunt Slonem: They were profoundly upset but they've gotten over it. I think they were just worried that I'd starve to death. My parents had four children and I' m the eldest. I think they're proud of some of what I've done - especially if they're mentioned. (Laughs). There are a lot of people in the arts in my family - my cousin - Tama Janowitz - wrote the book Slaves of New York. I also have cousins who were dancers, so this generation of my family was freer and had more opportunities than past generations.

Hunt Slonem Lories 2009 Oil on canvas 93 x 133 inches

Art Interview: You graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Tulane University - were you focussing on Fine Arts there?

Hunt Slonem: Yes, I first went to school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee but I graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. I have a degree in Painting and Art History. Tulane was the school that I went to that had such interesting courses. I took Louisiana History, and Louisiana Architecture with an eminent Louisiana architect named Samuel Wilson Jr. He instilled a love of plantation architecture in me. There were also wonderful Art History courses.

I'd also been an exchange student in Nicaragua when I was 16 during my high school years and I spent about six months of my sophomore year at the University of Americas in Cholula, Mexico. After that I was in love with Latin America.

Art Interview: I understand that you also took courses at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine?

Hunt Slonem Skowhegan summer 1972 Oil on Canvas 11 x 13 inches

Janet Fish Geese in Flight 1979 Oil on canvas 60 x 60 inches

Hunt Slonem: Yes, it is really the best summer school of its kind. I was exposed to great artists from the New York area - everybody from Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine, Richard Stankiewicz and Al Held. All kinds of people were there that summer. I was encouraged to move to New York so I didn't go to graduate school. New York was the only place where I'd seen what seemed to be a whole group of successful artists. Today there are many more than before. When I first came there Carl Andre, Brice Marden and Robert Ryman were really hot - the art scene was kind of minimal and conceptual. A little later there were a lot of Chicago artists being shown - Gladys Nilsson, and others associated with the ‘Hairy Who' group, but we were studying Pop Art.

Art Interview: Did you have any idea of what it took to become a professional artist by that point?

Hunt Slonem: Not really. When I first came to New York, in 1973, I was really struggling - I had every job known to man. Unfortunately I was a very bad waiter so that didn't work out (Laughs). I was fired from El Morocco after working there for only one night. I was hired by the Department of Social Services to teach painting to older people and I was mugged many times while coming home through the darkest, far-reaching parks of Brooklyn and the Bronx. You could say that I was kind of thrown to the wolves.

By the time I was twenty-four I had actually decided to move to Amsterdam but that night I got a call from Janet Fish who offered me her studio for the summer and that turned my life around. I got a painting grant in 1976 from the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Foundation in Montreal, which helped me enormously. I have had many thrilling moments in my formative career but the main thing was that I kept painting everyday.

In 1977 I had my first show at Harold Reed Gallery. Ruth Kligman, the woman who survived Jackson Pollock's fatal car wreck gave me the connection there. Fischbach Gallery also picked me up that same year.

As things progressed I was introduced to people. New York in the 1970s was a real melting pot: you could meet every level of society. It was so exciting for me to be around people like Truman Capoten, Liza Minelli, Sylvia Miles and Andy Warhol. My brother worked at Interview Magazine and I became great friends with Monique van Vooren who became the star of Andy Warhol's film Flesh for Frankenstein. There were a lot of club kids around and many people died early, like Klaus Nomi and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Art Interview: Did any of your early projects lay a foundation for your current work?

Hunt Slonem Fan Dance 1978 Port Authority, World Trade Center Tower 1. New York, New York

Hunt Slonem: The Cultural Council Foundation Arts Project, which was basically a re-institution of the WPA [Works Progress Administration] program, hired me in 1978 to do an 80-foot mural for the Port Authority dining hall in the tower one of the World Trade Center. I was screened and chosen by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York). Later I had to patch the mural up after the first bombing in 1993. Of course there's nothing left of it now.

Like Arshile Gorky or Jackson Pollock - we were given assignments, punched a time clock and painted. I did another 80-foot mural for a school in Brooklyn and I was also paid to do things for churches in Brooklyn and Tribeca. To be involved with public art was wonderful and it carried into my early work. All my animal paintings came out of those early Saint paintings I was doing for the murals.

Art Interview: When you were young did you have a naïve idea of what your life working as an artist would be like?

Hunt Slonem: I think the whole idea of the art market was formed in the 1960s with Pop Art. No one told me what it would be like. I don' t know that I had such a clear-cut image of what it would be like to be an artist. We all have these romantic ideas. I always wanted to do a lot and I was very frustrated earlier in my life because I wanted to be busy and working towards goals all the time. I wanted there to be enough going on so I could go from project to project. I wanted to able to have enough material and space to produce work on a scale that would be significant. So just having enough of all these things to explore and learn and grow was what I wanted. I have yet to find out what my limits are (laughs), or how many square feet I would need for the perfect studio - I think it would be around 100,000 square feet. Still it wouldn' t take me long to fill even that up. I am still learning about scale - I used to hate painting little paintings but all my dealers told me, “You have to paint little paintings”. Finally I got good at it after 20 years of struggling to scale my work down.

Art Interview: Did your dealers want you to scale your work down for marketing purposes?

Hunt Slonem Mural Bryant Park Grill 1995 6 x 86 feet

Hunt Slonem: Was it a marketing thing: yes, but it was also reality. We have to face the facts; most people don't have huge homes. For a lot of collectors buying a painting is a one shot deal. They need something practical for a wall in their home. They call it ‘European' size because up until recently no one did big paintings in Europe unless a palace commissioned them. Of course a lot of contemporary homes now have large walls and a lot of people are building spaces just to show their collections. I paid attention to what my dealers told me and I tried to meet the challenge of whatever was required, big or small, and it was a good for me. I think Clyfford Still only painted really large paintings but I think he had a lot of family money so he didn't have to survive on income from his art alone. The biggest thing that I ever did was the Bryant Park Grill mural behind the New York Public Library. It is 86 feet long. I was quite challenged by that project because I couldn't even see the whole thing until it was put together on the day it was installed. That led to me wanting a bigger space to paint in, which I have now - I've had three different studios in New York - I'm currently on 46th street. I love painting in a very large scale. I like challenges.

Hunt Slonem CBS news Sunday morning

Art Interview: How large is your current studio?

Hunt Slonem: It has 15,000 square feet, which is not really big enough. I had 40,000 square feet before that, but it was a short-term thing. That studio was the subject of many articles including being filmed for CBS news Sunday morning. The space was just cavernous - it had 89 rooms! It was hard for me to leave it, and it's still sitting there empty! I would like to have a much larger studio again - I don't know when that will happen. I hate it when my paintings get damaged when they're wet, which seems to be a pretty constant occurrence now.

Art Interview: Do you have assistants helping you?

Hunt Slonem: I am blessed with long-term assistants. I have one woman who helps me in the office and I have people that wash brushes, stretch and prime canvas for me. I work from 7 am until as late as I can. I don't have enough hands or enough time in the day. Often I have to go to a lot of charity functions that take up my time. I also live with a lot of birds, which keep me company but they need to be taken care of as well. So, I'm split into quite a few directions. (Laughs) I'm pretty busy all the time.

Art Interview: How many paintings are you able to produce in a year?

Hunt Slonem Rabbit 2009 Oil on masonite 24 x 18 inches

Hunt Slonem: Well, that's a tough question. I don't really know. The easiest paintings to count would be the large scale ones. Last year I did more than ever because I was working on a show called Bayou Teche. I did seventeen 9-foot paintings for that particular project. I normally don't do that many large paintings - I do a lot of smaller ones like my Chinese rabbit series. I paint them in groups and frame them with 19th century frames, which have been restored. I am always scavenging for old frames because I just love them. I paint the little paintings quickly. Hans Hofmann also did a lot of small-scale works. He called them his warm-up paintings. I do the larger paintings in sections and it can take a few weeks to finish one. One section usually takes three or four days - because I need to make my marks before the paint sets.

Art Interview: In order to be a professional artist there's a certain amount of discipline required. Were you always a disciplined person or did you have to learn that discipline?

A HUGE amount of discipline is required to be an artist! I was always determined. In the early years it was hard for me to figure out what to do. My goal was to make a unique statement. It takes an awfully long time to get to that place. I guess some people get there earlier, but I came into my own in the mid to late 1980s. So, it took me 20 years to really find something that was recognizably mine.

Hunt Slonem Whispers 2008 Oil on canvas 96 x 124 inches

Art Interview: You scratch into the paint with the end of the brush after painting the surface.

Hunt Slonem: Yes, I'm making those little crosshatch marks with the back end of the brush, which I have sharpened to a point.

Art Interview: Do those trademark crosshatches originate from your birdcages?

Hunt Slonem: Yes - I looked at everything through a cage that took up half my loft. I held several hundred birds at one time. So I saw everything dissolving through a grid. The cross hatches began to take on a lot of other meanings for me - like the veils of seen and unseen realities, the disappearing of nature and urban life, which is sort of a blur.

Art Interview: When did you begin to abstract your paintings by putting crosshatches into them?

Hunt Slonem: That started after my second trip to India - I used to go to an Ashram. I helped start an aviary in Ganeshpuri, India. When I came back the crosshatch marks started to emerge in my work. I can' t even tell you the first time I did it or why - I was experimenting a lot more and I got so excited about buying gallons of paint instead of using tubes.

Art Interview: Was there a change in the reception of your work when you started to use the crosshatch?

Joseph Cornell (1903-1973, USA) Untitled (The Hotel Eden) c. 1945 Construction 15 1/8 x 15 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Hunt Slonem: Gosh that's so hard to say. The first review I got on the crosshatched work was from a show at the Jason McCoy Gallery and it was an all black and white show. The cross hatching was not as finely done then as it is now. Roberta Smith wrote a review in The New York Times saying that she thought they looked like Joseph Cornell painted them. There was a definite correlation because he used a lot of birds in his work and wire in his boxes. But that was not a conscious attempt on my part - perhaps I subconsciously I took something from him. I did study Cornell's work among others. My repeated monkey face paintings where inspired somewhat by Frida Kahlo. Between J.R. Eyerman's iconic image of rows of moviegoers wearing 3d glasses and Frida Kahlo's portrait with monkeys sitting behind her I came up with the monkey eye paintings, which is an ongoing series.

Art Interview: I once heard that Pablo Picasso was a role model for you.

Hunt Slonem: I'm a great admirer of his work. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were great inspirations for me in terms of how they filled their respective spaces.

Art Interview: Did you have particular artists that inspired you when you were developing your style?

Hunt Slonem: Oh yes - many. I went through the whole gamut. I think Picasso's work has held up well, but there are just so many. It's hard to know where to begin: I love German Expressionism. There have been many contemporary artists who I' ve admired a great deal and still do, such as, Roberto Juarez, Francesco Clemente and Rainer Fetting. One of my favourite painters is Alex Katz who has also been a wonderful supporter of my work.

Art Interview: I would assume that you choose to paint with loose brushwork for a reason. Some critics have referred to you as a neo-expressionist painter.

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900, USA) Scene on the Catskill Creek 1847 Oil on canvas 21.5 x 29.75 inches Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstorn

Hunt Slonem: I like the term ‘no category' - Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin's used that. [“I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.”] I think categorizations are just for marketing purposes. My category hasn't been thought of yet. (Laughs) Frederic Edwin Church of the Hudson River School spent nine years in the Hudson valley overlooking the river. He was part of the great turn of the century movement, which was inclined to look to the exotic. Church painted Cotopaxi in the Andes, and he painted many different kinds of birds and orchids. I kind of like to think that I am the last of these painters.

Art Interview: Have you ever feared that people would categorize your work as decorative?

Hunt Slonem: I've been called every name in the book: decorative, neo-expressionist, you name it; I've been called it. I was even called a pop artist! I think my paintings contain a certain kind of tradition of ‘painterlyness'. The way I handle paint perhaps comes from the ‘New York' school. The spiritual nature of my work is very distinctive. When I had my first show at Marlborough Gallery Vincent Katz wrote an article about my work in Art in America called “Animal, Vegetable, Mystical”. I really liked that title. I like the term exotic in reference to my artwork. I see it as meaning the experience of the unfamiliar. There are other people whose works relate to mine. There was an article in the New York Sun when I had my last show at Marlborough Chelsea, which linked my work to that of Richmond Burton.

Art Interview: How long have you been working with Marborough Gallery?

Hunt Slonem: 14 years.

Art Interview: Has Marborough Gallery been able to offer you things that your other galleries couldn't?

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