Hunt Slonem in an American artist who is one of the favourite darlings of the American art scene. Slonem’s artwork is held in over 50 galleries and museums world wide and his Neo-Expressionist style set New York on fire in the 1980’s with his paintings of bunnies with diamond dust adorned on their ears.

Slonem keeps an odd ball menagerie in his New York apartment with over 100 birds and other creatures and uses thick brushstrokes and cross hatching to capture vivid, energetic artwork  of exotic birds and bunnies.

His artwork teeters on fantastic and fantasy and his boyhood fantasy of all things exotic has been stoked ever since he traveled to Hawaii in his youth. It is one curiosity as to how one artist can command such rapture in the world of art by something so seemingly simple.

Slonem opened today and I was invited to his solo exhibition at the Harmon Meek Gallery in Naples, Florida. The event  was packed with collectors who clamour for his work.

I loved the brilliant colours, repetitive rhythms across the canvas,  and the mystery of some of the artwork which at times, appeared to be veiled behind a thin layer of gauze…Hey, if an artist can sell a sketch of a bunny painting for $11,000 and people are clamoring for the work I say — go get ’em Dude.