By Eileen Moon
LINCROFT – Those who have lost a loved one know how their spirits endure, traveling with us beyond the pain of hard goodbyes, walking with us even when we seem to walk alone.
Although Fair Haven artist Mike Quon’s father, Milton, died in 2019 at the age of 105, he remains very much present in his son’s life – not only as a soul companion, but as a fellow artist whose brushstrokes reflect the continuing conversation between father and son, a conversation uninterrupted by time, by distance, by death.
This Sunday, June 22, Monmouth Museum will host the opening reception for the exhibit, “Milton & Mike Quon: Art Runs in the Family.”
For Quon, the museum’s invitation to mount a father-son exhibit was a special opportunity for him to honor the man who first inspired him to paint and draw.
“It would be great if he was able to see this, but it’s very exciting to honor his legacy,” Mike said.
Milton Quon was the eldest child and only son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Los Angeles, where Milton was born in 1913. He followed his passion for the arts into college, earning a scholarship to the Chouinard Institute of the Arts (Now California Institute of the Arts). After graduation, he became one of the first Chinese Americans to be hired by Walt Disney Studios as an animator, where he worked on Disney classics, including “Fantasia” and “Dumbo.”
During World War II, he worked as an illustrator for McDonnell Douglas, later becoming the first Chinese American art director for the national advertising agency BBDO, during the height of the “Mad Men” era.
A watercolor of flowers by Milton Quon.
Proud of his Chinese heritage, he enrolled his son in Chinese language classes, with limited success. “Being a 9-year-old American kid, I didn’t want anything to do with it,” Mike recalled. “Kids just want to not be different. (But) as you get older, you have more appreciation for your heritage.”
His Chinese teacher also introduced him to using a Chinese brush, which helped him develop a brushstroke advertising style that proved valuable in his commercial advertising work.
While Milton was there for Mike through Scouting and sports and the usual rituals of childhood, it was through the language of art that father and son learned to communicate most clearly, each in their individual style.
The elder Quon was a formalist, classically trained, whose watercolors and illustrations are rich in detail, his son notes. “My father saw the soul in every petal,” Mike said.
He would never paint from photographs, instead making sketches that he would later translate into his painting.
Throughout his career, he also responded to his own artistic visions, disappearing with his paintbrushes in his free time until necessity called him home. “He would disappear into his art, plein air painting, the way an alcoholic goes to a bar,” Mike joked. Mike’s mother took her husband’s absences in stride. “She’d say, ‘He’ll come back when he’s hungry,’ ” Mike said. “He was very odd that way.”
Throughout his career in commercial art, Milton continued to study with master artists, taking workshops and improving his own work. It was a passion he would continue until the last day of his life. “It kept him going, the art,” Mike said, “It’s kind of special to be a progeny of that.”
It wasn’t unusual for Mike to call his father – into his 90s and beyond – in California late at night, knowing he would be awake and at work no matter the hour.
Driven to the work of art, his father never sought the spotlight. He was 85 before he had a formal exhibit. “He was a very humble person,” Mike said. “He didn’t have a need to exhibit. He was just involved in the work.”
While Mike’s own work is freer than his father’s, full of humor and energy, there is harmony in the differing styles of father and son. “We have similar ways of looking at the world,” Mike said.
His father never gave him any formal instruction. He learned instead by watching him work.
“Although he would give me pointers and would see me working, we never actually talked about art,” Mike said.
Years later, Mike would ask his father why he never tried to teach him. “It seemed like you were doing pretty well on your own,” his father responded.
Reaching his teens during the height of the Beach Boys era in Southern California, Mike won his first art award for a surfing illustration for Surfer Magazine. He was 14.
Despite his son’s obvious talent, Milton Quon had other aspirations for his son: He wanted him to become a doctor. Mike made an attempt to fulfill his father’s ambitions for him by enrolling in the pre-med program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
It soon became apparent that just wasn’t going to work out.
“They basically told me that I didn’t belong there,” Mike said. “It was clear to anyone who was watching that my talents were not in medicine.”
Instead, the younger Quon headed happily toward the art department, completing his degree in commercial art.
Like his father before him, Mike found success in advertising and graphic design, turning out work that has been featured all over the world in campaigns that included the Summer Olympics in Australia, World Cup Soccer in Paris and many other major campaigns. His work has also been included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and in museum and gallery exhibitions in New York, Paris and Los Angeles.
While he still has commercial clients, Mike has cut back on advertising and design work to focus on following his own muse, pencil or paintbrush in hand. “Now I get to draw anything,” he said.
Meanwhile, his two sons are carrying on the family legacy. Ryan Quon, 26, is a filmmaker and photographer in New York City. Evan Quon, 22, is a senior at Rutgers and an artist working in sports marketing. “You can’t stuff that art gene,” Mike said.
“If you have a talent, you have a responsibility to share it,” he observed.
The opening reception June 22 will take place at Monmouth Museum on the Brookdale Campus from 4 to 6 p.m. “Milton and Mike Quon: Art Runs in the Family” will be on exhibit in the Nilsson Gallery through July 31. The reception is free and open to the public.
The article originally appeared in the June 19 – 25, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
