It’s 9.30 in the morning, and Digby is dancing.

Much like his paintings, Digby exudes happiness. His artwork makes you feel that way. But it’s more than that. Digby’s art commands that you be happy. You can’t spend time looking at a Digby Webster image and come away with anything but a sense of joy. There is a tacit understanding that when we look at art we are searching for meaning and we also want to engage with something we can take away with us, be it entertainment, a discourse on aesthetics, a serious statement from the artist, or recognisable conventions that we relate to. Digby’s art takes the every day and makes it magical. Bright, vivid colours and quirky names are the trademarks of his art, which is now beginning to be recognised throughout Australia. Digby takes everyday objects, animals and people and transforms them into a style that is his own. He puts flowers in socks, invents hybrid animals, gives people, and objects fantasy hats, hairdos and facial expressions and has a penchant for Elvis’ black mop of hair. It’s playful and whimsical. Digby takes us back to the exuberance of the simple form.

Digby is gathering somewhat of a cult following. With no formal art training, Digby’s art has developed organically. He has carved out his own style. He was encouraged by his parents, both having a background in visual arts. He started his artistic venture with pottery. His close family friend, Dora Booth, herself an artist and academic, worked with Digby making clay objects. Dora has been a huge influence in Digby’s life. Digby started making vases, putting his own signature stamp on the vases in the form of line work. He loved looking at the finished objects after had been fired in the kiln, chunky vases with his patterns on them. Digby entered his work in the Castle Hill Show and was prize-winner. He was elated that he was named a Champion in Clay Work.

Whenever he was watching television, Digby would have a texta and paper in front of him. He often drew lines in patterns. This technique was later to become part of his signature style. Black lines with vivid colour filling in the spaces of the shapes he draws are what defines his present phase of artwork. Digby started with textas, progressed to crayons and then to acrylics, oil and pastels. Now he has in own studio in Sydney and has had many exhibitions.

‘I’m a man who knows his colours,’ he says. He leans in, a mischievous smile on his face and says, ‘I’m a very messy artist.’ And then he laughs. Digby’s laugh is so infectious you can’t help but laugh as well.

‘My head is full of fantastic things,’ Digby says.

Digby got his first breakthrough when Alison Richardson, director of RUCKUS, a performance group that Digby was part of, had the idea of staging an exhibition at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta. The Don’t Dis My Ability exhibition kick-started his career, which is now in its tenth year. Digby is also currently in his tenth year with the Australia Arts Council. In the last decade, Digby has been exhibited in the Tin Sheds Gallery, DNA Projects Chippendale, The Live a Little Exhibition in Leichhardt, The Opera House AART BOXX and many other places. He was one of the prize winners of the Bloomin’ Arts in 2015, an exhibition in partnership with Sydney College of the Arts. In 2018, Digby’s work was incorporated into the winning logo for the Special Olympics in Adelaide. The result came out of a series of paintings by Digby commissioned by Taste Media. Those paintings reflected the landscape of South Australia. In the same year, Digby was artist in residence for Arterie, an international award-winning art program based at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. His work has been featured in the Vivid Ideas Exchange as part of the Vivid festival in Sydney, and both the Australia Council for the Arts and Artbank have his works in their collections.

Digby has been artist in residence at Hill End, Bundanoon and at The Bearded Tit Redfern during May 2019. His work was awarded a 'Winning Work' and selected by the BiG-i Art Project 2016 in Osaka. The work was included in a travelling exhibition throughout Japan and Hong Kong. Digby has also been a production designer and has had acting roles in award-winning films The Interviewer and Heartbreak and Beauty.

2018 saw Digby in his first film role. Kairos, an award-winning film about an aspiring boxer with Down Syndrome. Digby played Sam, the brother of boxer Danny, who struggles to succeed in what he wants to do. The film has been highly praised for its inclusiveness; it features three actors with a disability. The film was nominated as the People’s Choice Award at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2019 and won Best Film at the Tertio Millenio Film Fest in 2018. It also won Film of the Year in the Lebanese Film Festival Australia in 2019.

No day is the same for Digby. He doesn’t always finish a painting in one session. ‘Sometimes, I paint a bit and then come back a bit later and do some more. Sometimes, I’ll do more the next day and leave it for a bit and then more the next day.’

As far as inspiration goes, it’s an eclectic mix. Digby’s influences span cartoons, fairy tales, Jim Henson, rockabilly culture, The Narnia books, Ben Quilty, Anh Do, Van Gough, the fifties, the Memphis scene, and anything else that takes his fancy. He loves Anh Do’s Archibald painting of Jack Charles. ‘I love that thick paint on the palette knife,’ Digby says. ‘And I love the way he is interested in the backgrounds of the people he paints.’ Digby says he would like to put something in the Archibald one day. Digby loves nature, birds especially. Sometimes, he takes his canvas and paints outside to do what he calls, ‘open-air’ painting, making images from what he observes in nature. That open-air concept extends to a mural in Albion St, Annandale, Sydney. Digby and street artist Neil ‘birdhat’ Tompkins, a well-known urban artist, collaborated on the project. Digby feels his art bodily. It comes from his head, down through his body and into his hands, he says.

It isn’t all playful all the time. Recently, Digby tells me, he heard the song Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. It made me sad to think of him losing his son, he says. I just had to do a painting about what I felt about it.’

The playfulness that has become the hallmark of Digby’s artwork extends to the names of the paintings as well. ‘I just think up the names. Sometimes I get ideas from popular culture. I want people to enjoy the names as well as the art,’ he says. With names like Sunlight Alien, Red Eyed Rasta, Rainbow Brain, See What I see, Raining Cats and Dogs and Melon Head, what’s not to enjoy?  Digby also wants to be a role model for other artists with a disability. His work has been recently exhibited at Barangaroo in the I’m Still Here emerging artists exhibition. He is a member of Front Up, an Arts and Cultural disability-led program.

So, if you’re having a bad hair day or things aren’t going as they should, go look at a Digby Webster image (digbywebster.com). It’ll put a smile on your face.

It might even get you dancing.