The Countess

According to the artist Hunt Slonem, this work portrays Xacha Obrenevitch, a 1920s spiritualist (a medium who could communicate with the spirits of the dead), who was also the lover of silent film star Rudolph Valentino. Slonem refers to Obrenevitch as “the Countess.” Through séances, Slonem recounts that the Countess told him to purchase and refurbish a plantation, named Lakeside, in Louisiana, which he later did.Slonem, born in Maine in 1951, began his artistic training at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1972. He considers spirituality an important part of his creative process and he consults psychics frequently. The artist has said that he communicates regularly with Abraham Lincoln through a Swedish medium. In addition to spiritualism, animals and the natural world, most notably birds, have been the central focus of his work, which he sees as a metaphor for transcendence from an earthly to a spiritual realm.