Encounter: Albert (Digby) Moran
Albert (Digby) Moran had an idyllic childhood catching fish and running free on Cabbage Tree Island. At 18, he travelled the country with Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe. At 42, he gave up drinking, and discovered painting. Then came the Lismore floods. But he’s back with a solo show in Lismore and another in Armidale next year. Madeleine Murray spent the day with the charismatic Aboriginal artist, and is still thinking about it.
The flood
Digby Moran is standing alone in the upstairs room of the Lismore Regional Gallery. The huge room and corridors are filled with his paintings. This is his life, or at least his life in the past 18 months. His Lismore studio was flooded up to the ceiling in the devastating floods of April, 2017.
“The landlord said ‘Just pack everything up on the table,’ “Digby says. “No one was expecting it to go so high. I was at home in Goonellabah, and we realised the flood was much worse.
“When I opened the studio roller door two days later, I saw everything underwater, pushed up, mud everywhere. The paint tins were wedged in the ceiling ledges.”
Digby carted years of paintings, materials, photos, framed certificates, and exhibition posters to the tip.
“I lost a lot. I chucked everything to the tip. I chopped them up, very painful. Especially for me, a lot of stuff inside of me comes up and goes into that work. Devastating. It’s hard, you can’t let go of stuff. I just wanted to be in the studio on me own and soak it all up. Tears and sweat. I just couldn’t work.”
But Digby got his power back, and eighteen months later, he has enough work for a solo show, full of large powerful works of slathered strong impasto, and several salvaged, intricate, older dot works.
At the gallery
It’s Sunday morning and a young woman in a 30’s blue-and-white dress and a bright red satin cushion on her head brings a group of children in to hear ‘Uncle Digby’ talk about his paintings.
Digby stops in front of Mullet Hopping, a man in a red shirt and black trousers rowing a boat in sparkling water. Three black fish with jewel-like white dots are landing in the boat. “When you row a boat at night in the mangroves, the fish think it’s a bull shark and jump right out of the water,” he tells the astonished kids. “The mullet jump into the boat. They still do it.”
Fun Times is a thick impasto of green-brown paint smeared on a 2x1.5m canvas. “This is like the mud when I was a kid on Cabbage Tree Island. We used to muck around on the riverbank, making swirls with our fingers. When the painting was still wet, I got my little grandson to run around on it. His father and I just held his hand when he was walking around cause he couldn’t walk on his own. Every time he’d walk he’d slip!”
The kids love this story, and a little girl tentatively comes up and touches the canvas. The guide says, “I just want to lick it!” Everyone laughs.
At the café
Digby has a cloud of white curls that swirl around his head, a powerful ex-boxer’s build and gentle voice. You have to be in a certain position, or maybe he has to be in a certain mood, to see his eyes, but when you do see them, his eyes are deep, dark pools with bluish flecks like one of his paintings.
He has a mischievous look, and a warm, strong hug. I feel completely at ease, but also intrigued as I never know what he will say next. Down in the café, two border collies are playing around our table. I tell the owner how nice they are, and Digby suddenly says, “Dogs crap everywhere and children step in it. I see it in the park across from my studio, it’s not right.” Silence.
Digby grew up on Cabbage Tree, a small island about a kilometre long in the Richmond River near Ballina. “We were always out in the boat fishing with my brothers, sisters and cousins – prawning with hessian bags.
“I really loved growing up with those family ties. I miss them all now cause most have passed on. When I’m painting I always talk to them. My dad was a boxer and he died when he was 40. There was 9 of us, no TV back in those days.”
Nor were there any cars on the island. “We’d put everything in the pram and billy cart, take it down to the beach and camp out during the school holidays.”
Boxing, fruit picking and drinking
Digby left Cabbage Tree Island when he was 18. “I joined Jimmy Sharman’s Boxing Troupe like my father did before me. We travelled to Melbourne and all over the place.
“I was taught to handle myself, my dad was the heavyweight champion of the North Coast. Dad fought big Les McNabb in Newcastle stadium. They weighed Les on a railway scale, he was that heavy.”
After boxing for three years, Digby came back to Lismore, and worked at cutting cane by hand and fruit picking.
“When I returned here I met my children’s mother in Lismore. I was working hard and drinking hard, and split up with her because of the drinking. I have three girls and one boy and we’re all close. I ended up moving back down near Ballina with Mum. I used to go back and forth to Mildura on the fruit down there. One thing I could say, I always worked. I couldn’t talk our language, but I was sitting out the back one night and something spiritual got into me. I was talking our language. After that I never ever touched a drop. I went up to the pub next day with the boys because I was seedy. I ordered a schooner, I picked it up, but I couldn’t get it higher than my chest. I tried it a couple of times after relationship break-ups, first thing you do, but I couldn’t do it.”
A new life
In 1991 he started a TAFE course in painting. “It was too European for me. I wanted to paint in my own culture. I’ve never looked back.
“All that cultural stuff was always in me, just waiting for the right time to come out, after I gave up drinking. It’s as if I’m channelling my ancestors.”
Digby’s mum was his biggest fan. “She used to come over at night and watch me paint.”
Nine years after he started painting, Digby won the inaugural People’s Choice Telstra Award in 2000 in Darwin. “I did that with a tooth pick. All of me, right in there, all my energy is just focussed on the canvas.”
He exhibited in Berlin in 2001 and 2002, Vienna in 2003, and had solo shows in Germany in 2004 and 2009.
Digby’s first time overseas was in 2001. “I used to get up and look at the mountains. I couldn’t work out what all this colour was so I walked down, and it was just the tulips! It was beautiful. I loved it.”
Digby had a solo show in NSW Parliament in 2010 and was a finalist in The New South Wales Parliament Aboriginal Art Prize in 2011 & 2012.
“Looking back to where I come from, and where I am now … I’ve been an Australian Ambassador for nine years. That was a big thing in my life, getting out there and talking to people about my experiences. I used to be shy, I used to pick a spot on the wall and look at that to talk.”
Despite all this success, Digby still works as a drug and alcohol support worker at Namatjira Haven. “I’ve been there for years. I love doing what I’m doing, helping other people.
“Same with my art, I help a lot of people through my art. People come up to me and want to hear my stories and how I started painting. It’s good to sit there and tell children what they can do.
“I feel grateful that I can make other people happy just by looking at my work. I feel good about myself.”
His message. Soft and clear
“Just be yourself. Don’t try to be anyone else. You can do anything you want. Just follow your dream. Dream big and don’t look back.”
Muse–
Digby Moran
Words–
Madeleine Murray
@madzufi
Photo–
Rebecca Rushbrook
@rebeccarushbrookphotograph
Originally published in Paradiso Issue 6