[1] Slonem's works are included in many important museum collections all over the world; he exhibits regularly at both public and private venues, and he has received numerous honors and awards.
Slonem's grandmother was a Tennessee native who married a Minnesota-born amateur artist and educator who became the Superintendent of Public Schools in Duluth, Minnesota.
I was given paints as a child, and I wanted to be a painter from first grade onwards," Slonem told the online magazine Art Interview.
His younger brother, Jeffrey Slonim, is a prolific journalist, and contributing editor of the Interview Magazine, and his cousin is the best-selling author Tama Janowitz.
[3] After completing school, which included living in Nicaragua as an exchange student when he was 16 years old, Slonem commenced undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
He also took courses at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he was exposed to such influential artists from the New York area as Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine, and Al Held.
He was unhappy at his job and seriously considered moving to Amsterdam when, unexpectedly, in 1975, he got a call from artist Janet Fish who offered him her studio for the summer.
As Slonem's career progressed, he was introduced to people like Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli, Sylvia Miles, and Truman Capote.
"[6] Despite living in the heart of Manhattan, Slonem remained true to his boyhood fascination with exotica, which he had developed as a youth in Hawaii and during his time as a foreign exchange student in Managua, Nicaragua.
Art critic Roberta Smith wrote in the New York Times that Slonem's "witty Formalism strategy meshes the creatures into the picture plane and sometimes nearly obliterates them as images, but it also suspends and shrouds them in a dim, atmospheric light that is quite beautiful.
"[7] Birds also fill the surface of his largest project yet – a 6-foot by 86 foot mural he painted for the iconic Bryant Park Grill Restaurant in New York City, completed in 1995.
"[11] Slonem's obsessive and repetitive rendering of his subjects reflects his desire to explore issues of spatial complexity, compression and density in what the acclaimed Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler deemed "a consistent investigation of post-cubist abstraction.
[15] Apart from painting, Slonem is also making sculptures, like the sizable, "Tocos," an 18-foot acrylic and aluminum tower of toucans exhibited at the Polk Museum of Art in 2012.
In 2009, Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in New York City, recreated Slonem's distinct art-filled living room for its windows display.
[19] In 2014, he collaborated with fashion accessories company Echo Design Group for a limited edition scarf and handbag collection.
[22] His work has been exhibited globally, including in Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
[26] Through Art in Embassies, Slonem's paintings have been exhibited globally revealing, as Hillary Clinton put it, "the rich history and cultural heritage of the United States and the experiences that we share with peoples of different countries, backgrounds and faiths.
"[32] A March 2012 issue of Architectural Digest features Shields's Manhattan townhouse, with three of Slonem's "rabbit paintings" prominently displayed on her living room wall.
[42] The studio housed his collections, from Neo-Gothic chairs to top hats, to marble busts of Marie Antoinette, to various objets d'art, mined from flea markets and antique fairs.
In an interview in Vincent Katz's book Pleasure Palaces: The Art & Homes of Hunt Slonem, he describes his collecting technique as "cluttering.
Slonem also owned two historically important Louisiana plantations—one called Albania Plantation, on the Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, about two hours' drive northwest of New Orleans.
"[44] It was once owned by Marquis de La Fayette whose close relationship with lifelong friends such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe, John Adams, and Robert Livingston played a pivotal role in the Louisiana Purchase.