STILL CLASSIC: Rene Milot
by Jacqueline Lopez
You could call Rene Milot an illustrator and leave it at that, but you’d be wrong. It would be like describing a five course meal as simply dinner, or the statue of David as rock. The strata of experience that comes with the art of Rene Milot was something I was completely unprepared for, and all for the better.
I was set on interviewing Rene after selecting his piece The Gilded Cage to start Workbook’s STILL CLASSIC awareness campaign. After a few brief email exchanges, I got Rene on the phone for what I was expecting to be a brief call. I anticipated the call lasting an hour tops, with the illustrator recounting projects as conquests and self-ingratiation, albeit well deserved, still having the air of interviews long time passed.
It was only upon glancing at the clock mid-laughter after an hour had effortlessly passed that I realized that my chat with Rene wasn’t at all what I imagined.
To consolidate my chat with Rene into blog form has been something astoundingly difficult. The man is a jovial and honest well of knowledge, his stories and experiences could easily be material enough for an editorial. Above all else, his anecdotes and Laozi-esque philosophies speak not on illustration, but on life. Below is my attempt to hit upon the things most striking about my time on the phone with Rene: an exceptional illustrator, an instant friend, and a wonderful being.
Rene “The Long Way Home”
First off, Rene is an evergreen student. His mother’s nickname for him speaks to this aspect of his character: “If there is something that I do not know, I will inquire about it and try to do it.” Though often attributed to stubbornness, it’s what got him into illustration.
“My first year in college I was going to become an architect. I met a buddy of mine who was studying at a college in Toronto, which I had no clue but at the time was the most one of the most famous art colleges in the world (Ontario College of Arts). I applied there and got in, so I could kiss the rest of my science college career goodbye. My last semester at my college back home was great. I had philosophy, English, and party organizing.
“Illustration was a revelation to me. I came from a really small town, so it was not something that even the [high school] counselor knew about. Illustration became such a discovery. Day after day I was like a kid in a candy store going ‘oh look at this frame,’ ‘look at this person.’ Then I discovered some US illustrators, and I [fell] in love right away. Mark English, Bernie Fuchs…Mark English is my god, to this day. And these were people who really influenced me. Not only artistically but styles of beautiful conceptual work like Brad Holland. I was basically converted at that point.”
Not shying away from the experience, Rene delved further in unknown media to discover his passion for oil painting.
“One assignment was given to us my second year of college, [and] I just decided ‘hey, I’m going to do an oil portrait.’ I had never touched oil. I had never bought oil before. Didn’t even know how to paint with it. [My] first attempt was mediocre but I [thought] there is potential here.”
Almost in concert with his ‘long way home’ process, oil evolved into Rene’s go-to media.
“[With oils], everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned on my own. One of the things that influenced me the most was a friend of the family who said to me ‘It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake, you always have to think right away of a solution.’ If you drop your brush on the middle of your painting, or you just ruined your sky, right away you gotta think ‘how can I solve it or do I have to start a new one again?’
“With oils the one thing that I realized is there [are] different ways of skinning a cat, so to speak. You could get to the same result by saying ‘Okay, I will let that dry, and tomorrow I’m gonna paint on top of it,’ or wet on wet ,or stuff like that.”
His zeal for learning is not without witnessed fault, particularly since he’s sobered up to the educational immediacy of the internet:
“Years ago I had the flu and I said ‘Okay, I can’t work today,’ so I just stayed at home at watched YouTube videos, and it was the most depressing thing I’ve seen it my life! I watched videos on how to paint in oils, and in 20 minutes everything I’ve learned in 20 years was all there. Where were you, YouTube, you bum?!”
“A horse is a horse. It’s not a cow.”
Rene’s website biography cites him having a focus in oil and digital painting. The latter was something brought forth out of necessity:
“When the computer came around a bunch of my friends were on it. I was not impressed with what it could do. In 2001, I got dropped into it. Three weeks after I got my first computer, a friend of mine called me up and said ‘Hey, we got a CD cover for you [for] this musician, and she’d really like it if you did a portrait of her.’ [After] this friend of mine showed me this application called PAINTER, I went and got it and started the job at 6:00 at night and finished at 11 o’clock that evening and delivered the job the next morning.”
Although digital is a welcomed alternative to the “panic runs” Rene used to go through getting art shipped out minutes before his mail-out window was closed, (“every time I would walk in the entire airport staff would applaud me!”) there is something Rene misses about the tactile medias.
“Everything I’m doing on the computer now came directly from my learning [in art school]. It doesn’t matter which media you used, you had to learn your values. I applied this to the computer, which provides me some shortcuts, but also some handicaps. Values are very tough to control on the computer. With some colors it doesn’t matter…, but especially when you print, you really have to work at it.
“I like to get in arguments with other illustrators [who] claim painting in oil on the computer. I say ‘no, you’re painting digitally.’ You want it to look like oil but it is still a digital media. So get off your high horse and accept what it is. A horse is a horse; it’s not a cow.”
“The best burger”
Rene is not without moments of discouragement. The pitfall of feeling creatively stifled by assignments is something he experiences as well. So how does one strive for balance without losing sense of self? Rene stems his answer from perspective as well as integrity.
“My father worked at a hospital, and one of the running jokes we had in our family was saying you’re a nurse, and you keep coming back from work and bitching at the kitchen table ‘Man, I’m sick of being around sick people.’ At the end of the day you chose that profession. So in my case I’ve accepted the boundaries. I have a simple philosophy: when you work with people, it’s better to work with them than to work for them. If you participate in the process, the process will become more enjoyable.
“There is a business person that I met several years ago [who] said, ‘If someone wants a burger, don’t give them fish. But if you give them a burger, how about you give them the best burger they’ve ever had?’ If they want a burger, I’m gonna give them a burger, but it’s gonna have the trimmings, and it’s gonna be so amazing that at the end of the day it’s going to be a good product. And to me, it has to do with some dignity. If I get involved with something, it doesn’t mean I enjoyed the product, doesn’t mean I know necessarily all the ins and outs of the company. But I’ve been called in as a specialist, an image maker, so I’m going to do my best personally because it’s my name going on it. I’m not going to succeed all the time, but it’s not by lack of trying.”
Still Classic
Our conversation runs the gamut, Rene expressing his love of windsurfing (Camp Hatteras is a yearly pilgrimage), his lack of ego when it comes to the right person for the job (“If an AD calls me up and I can’t do a project, I will switch it up right away and say I know the right person you’re looking for”), and the need to combat isolation as an illustrator (“It’s one of the most dangerous things”).
It is clear to me in the days that follow our talk how perfect Rene is to encapsulate the word classic. It is the timelessness of his character. He has a childlike fascination with his work paired with a reverence to the art that has inspired him. He told me, “I miss oil painting so much that sometimes if I go to an art show I’m the weirdo who smells the painting.” Strange? Possibly. But for someone whose life is his art, it’s almost poetic…appreciating art in a way unbeknownst to the average art lover. Or maybe we all have that potential. We just have to dig a bit deeper and take the long way home.
To view more of Rene’s work, CLICK HERE.
Rene Milot is repped by Morgan Gaynin Inc.
