Red Rover November is an oil painting on canvas with Diamond Dust from Hunt Slonem’s famous Rabbit series. Rabbits are one of the main motifs of the US-american artist. Hunt Slonem wakes up every morning and captures rabbits on canvas. These warm-up exercises are what John Berendt calls “the artistic equivalent of gymnastics, exercising his painting apparatus to gain control of the colors, shapes and textures that flow from his mind’s eye through his arm, hand and brush onto the painted surface.” Hunt Slonem paints countless other subjects, but rabbits are always the start of his day. Like the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” they lead him down the rabbit hole into the wonderland where the rest of his paintings are located.

Hunt Slonem was born in Maine, USA in 1951. His father was in the Navy, so the family moved often. Slonem has lived in Hawaii, Virginia, Connecticut, California, Washington State and Nicaragua, among other places.

He graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans with a Bachelor of Arts degree in painting and Art History. He also took couses at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he studied and met influential artists from the New York area, such as Louise Nevelson, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Richard Estes, Jack Levine and Al Held. Slonem refers to Alex Katz in particular as a big mentor and friend.

Another important artist for Slonem is Andy Warhol. He says that the repetition in Warhol’s work had a lasting influence on him, especially the Campbell’s soup cans and the portrait of Marilyn Monroe. With repeating a motif in his work again and again, such as the bunny, Slonem makes a reference to Andy Worhol. It’s like with prayer, so the artist. For him, repetition is a form of worship. In 1973 Slonem moved to New York, where he has lived and worked ever since.