Interview with Milo Hartnoll
Smudge
Milo Hartnoll is young British artist based in Brighton working almost exclusively with painting. His focus lies with traditional painting techniques and the human figure which he combines with aspects of visual digital language.
“I am fascinated by digital aesthetic language and internet culture, how memes are the new art form, communication is evolving, emoji use is now a life skill. How our realities are constructed by our perception of the world through a digital lens.”
Tell us about your background
I did a BA in illustration at the University of Brighton, then I spent two years at Draw Brighton’s Atelier programme, where I mainly just drew and painted from life models. But I would predominantly attribute my painting education to books and online resources.
I am part of a digital paint collective with 3 other painters, Hillary Butterworth, Denis Dalesio, and Seppe De Meyere, together we founded the internet art community/cult ‘Cane-Yo’, that takes advantage of modern digital communication tools to work together with other painters, share information, paint each other and generally d*ck about and make art memes.
Where do you place your work?
I am aiming for eventually exhibiting more in galleries when I make more substantial paintings, but for now, I am just figuring out my work. Developing it to the level I want it to be whilst selling some of them online and making the odd print.
I do like being in group shows a lot, having my work sit alongside other cool artists/art is really personally rewarding, It gives me an incentive to actually complete a painting. But those can be few and far between.
Although now I hit 30 I’ve decided its time to up my game a bit. Be more ambitious with what I paint, and resolve more paintings. Can’t doss about forever.
Genie_Magic
Do you draw from photographic reference?
Yes. A photograph is great at capturing a mood, a moment in time, as opposed to working from life. A person sitting still for 8 hours does not scream natural behaviour to me. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to not use photography as a reference, I’ve made paintings that are specifically about JPEG image compression artefacts. It’s hard to do that from life.
I used to work from my own photography more, but I’ve grown to love the mystery of a found photograph, or screen grabs of random YouTube videos, or some old family snapshot, or medical photography, and so on. I found that working from my own photographs and surroundings made me too trapped in my own bubble, I was limited by my own eye and what I had around me. So I branched out by painting whatever I came across that spoke to me in some way and finding the commonalities between them after.
James3kb
Is there a specific commentary between your choice of traditional technique of painting and the digital?
I’m not sure about a specific commentary, but you are right to notice a distinct connection. I am fascinated by digital aesthetic language and internet culture, how memes are the new art form, communication is evolving, emoji use is now a life skill. How our realities are constructed by our perception of the world through a digital lens. All that jazz.
I’ve always liked blurring those lines between analogue and digital, how elements of the latter can work in traditional form, and what that subversion does to the meaning/interpretation.
I think it started with just inserting shapes and symbols that are inherently digital into paintings, then I made a bunch of paintings of glitched/digitally corrupted files, then moved on to selfies, or screenshots of Skype calls with friends, and now I’m making work more about internet culture indirectly through painting memes, and I feel it will evolve more from here.
ShaQ Attaq
Tell us about your technique and inspiration
I draw inspiration from wherever I can find it, I try to keep an open mind. I gravitate more towards the weird and surreal, though. I am inspired a lot by outsider artists, the people who make art in a vacuum generally produce the most original and honest forms of art you can find. Henry Darger is a particular favourite.
I think as an artist you have to just become this sponge of inspiration, soaking up as much as you can, and the filthy liquid that comes out when you squeeze it is your work. It’s important to expose yourself as much as possible to have a broad frame of reference to guide you to where you need to be.
By that extension, I use paint in whatever way I can to try and get the effect I want. I mess around with other styles, hoping to expand my painting vocabulary so that I can borrow from whatever method best suits my current intentions, something that changes painting to painting. It’s equal parts fun and frustrating. Oil Painting is incredibly versatile, there’s a lot to work out.
Porthole
Reboot
How would you describe your work?
It’s a bit difficult for me to define. When asked by a layperson, I just say that I do figurative Oil painting, but that feels too reductive. On an artist statement I might go into depth about how I explore how we communicate and relate in a post-internet age, chuck in the word ‘juxtapose’ and I’m all set.
But in my own words, I’d say maybe (colourful) abstracted realism? I like to play with opposing forces; order and chaos, realism and abstraction, analogue and digital etc. There are loose conceptual threads that run throughout the work, but they are yet to be properly formalised.
My favourite description of my work was from someone who came to my studio and said the paintings made him feel like he was tripping on DMT. So if nothing else, I’d be happy with that.
2020 Vision
Can you share a little about portraiture as subject of your artwork?
I have always been interested in people, but from a more observational stance. Trying to figure them out, what makes us human. When I first started painting I wanted to be a portrait artist, now I want to move as far away from that label as possible.
My whole idea of portraiture has changed over time, how to actually represent a human, an individual. It started from a fairly vapid place, more just a literal translation of what the person looked like. Now some of my paintings of people I straight up wouldn’t call portraits, the person in those are just vessels to convey a particular mood, their actual personality is irrelevant.
Lately, I feel that a candid selfie can indicate much more about the person on the other side. There’s more humanity there, it’s, in essence, a self-portrait, and there’s nothing more individualistic than that. Through painting these images I find more naturalistic cues about their projected personalities, examine what kind of bathroom products they own, what sort of spaces they occupy, what kind of selfie they even submitted. I see the person in those things and try to paint that instead.
Maybe I wouldn’t be asking these questions if I weren’t painting people, but my interests are not solely in portraiture, I see my work as a bit broader than that.
Infinikitty
What paper do you think works best with your digital prints?
I haven’t tried them all yet, but I really like the German Etching paper. It’s got a good weight and feel to it; I didn’t think I would like the amount of tooth, but having it in my hands makes me appreciate how the texture better simulates that of a painting, without being overbearing. The physicality is lush.
What do you do outside creating your art?
Very little 😭
Hexed
Any interests and hobbies which influence or inspire you?
Honestly, I’m not interesting at all outside of this. I like to make music sometimes and watch videos about YouTube drama. Play some video-games. My social life is predominantly with other artists in Cane-Yo.
Do you have any upcoming shows or publications?
I have been illustrating poems for my mother’s final poetry collection, it’s called ‘Hey Girl!’ And is coming out sometime in 2021. It’s not really much like the normal stuff I do (the audience is early teen girls, after all), but it should be a cool little book, in particular, if you are an early teen girl.
See more of Milo’s work here.