Hunt Slonem was born in Maine in 1951. He studied at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine; Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN; and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University in Louisiana. In 1973 he moved to New York City, and since 2011 has been living and working in a 25,000 square foot studio in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. His studio, filled with mid-19th century antiques acquired at antique fairs and flea markets, is a veritable museum. These objects both satisfy his hunger for collecting and serve as a source of inspiration for his own work.Slonem’s work has long been influenced by his travels to such exotic locales as Hawaii, Nicaragua, Mexico and India. He is best known for his Neo-Expressionistic paintings of animals, butterflies, and birds in particular, all of which act as a sort of leitmotif. Canvases are filled with these objects, which are reproduced over and over in an act of repetition that has been prominent in his work for over 30 years now. His paintings are layered with thick brushstrokes of vivid color, often cut into in a cross-hatched pattern that adds texture to the overall surface of the painting.Slonem has had a long, illustrious and varied career. He has been commissioned to paint large-scale murals and has collaborated on product design with major retailers, including a stoneware collection for Tiffany & Co. and a custom–painted A5 sedan for Audi. Since 1977, the artist has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. Globally, more than 100 museums include his work in their collections, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Slonem is the subject of a number of monographs, including “Hunt Slonem, An Art Rich & Strange,” which features text by Donald Kuspit, and his work has been featured in countless prestigious publications. Hunt Slonem divides his time between New York City and Louisiana, where he owns two plantation homes on the historic register.