Art, in all of its forms, is a creative and expressive medium in which one can visually express their thoughts and ideas into reality. Local artist and recent graduate of Norristown Area High School, Dion Jackson, otherwise known as Deej Cert, captures this idea perfectly.
A current freshman at Delaware Valley University, Jackson is ready to redefine the boundaries of art itself, one pencil, pen, or paint stroke at a time.
Growing up in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Deej Cert, then just a young Jackson, picked up art from his family.
“I’ve had influences like my older brother,” Jackson said. “He didn’t necessarily do art, but he would trace like Sonic pictures and stuff, and that’s kinda where I picked it up–I would start tracing stuff with him.”
But it wasn’t until a little later that Deej Cert would really start taking art to a more serious level. Jackson would get his first drawing tablet from his grandmother as a gift for graduating from middle school. Then, during his freshman year, he really started to get into the digital art scene and post his art on social media.
“I feel like a lot of artists say this, but [art is] just a way to release your emotions,” he said. “You can create whatever you want, whenever you want to,”
Jackson also believes that art can be a path to showing the profoundness of emotions. He explained how he based his AP Art portfolio around “how emotions can envelop humans” and this theme can be found in many of his pieces, some of which are right here in the very halls of Norristown. This theme can also be found in his more recent art, demonstrating the innate ability of expression.
“I’m making whole compositions and whole pieces that mean something. I’m showcasing worlds where you have normal humans going up against the odds, against giants or supernatural powers that people have.”
But Deej seeks more than to just do the digital art he is becoming famous for.
“I seek to master every single medium,” he said. “You see pieces that I’ve done just in pencil, or charcoal. I’ve done pieces in purely pen or Sharpie. I’ve painted with oils and acrylics. Obviously, I do my digital work; I’ve done photography; I’ve taken digital works and printed them out and painted on top of the print. I’ve taken normal pieces and taken pictures of them drawn on top of them digitally and posted them. I’ve done a lot of different mediums of art and I can sound proficient in all of them.”

But his confidence has always been a defining feature of who he is, even since he was a kid.
“If you don’t do something that’s not sports or not ‘mainstream,’ it kind of sets you aside,” he said. During his time in Philadelphia, Jackson thought of himself as “the weird kid” sitting around trading Pokémon cards and drawing. “Especially having this giant, red afro on my head, it was pretty easy to be made fun of.”
But that never stopped Jackson from lacking confidence or preventing him from pursuing his dreams.
“Even if the piece isn’t the best, if you put it in someone’s face and act like it’s the best, people are going to find meaning in the art that you didn’t even intend to be there when you made it,” he said.
He elaborated that you shouldn’t care what others think about you just because you enjoy something that others might know very little about. Those people shouldn’t deter you from doing something that you enjoy, he said.
“It doesn’t matter, just be confident in you.”
In fact, Jackson derived his stage name “Deej Cert” from his aforementioned confidence. “Certain” is his father’s surname, a part of him he wanted to represent through his art, but it also refers to his “certainty.”
“I’m proud of my family name [Jackson], but I feel like my father’s is just more unique and I just wanted to integrate that into my character,” he said.
He abbreviated “Certain” to give it even more personality.
Deej is most known for his digital art, which can be found all across his Instagram.

However, last July, he conducted a show at Theatre Horizon, in which he was able to paint live in front of an audience of about one hundred people and even auction off some of his digital pieces.
The show was a part of the THREAD, or Theatre Horizon Residency for Educational Artistic Development, program he did last year.
Originally, a little nervous at the beginning, his confident demeanor was back up and present when he heard his queue to come out. He had already come this far and planned it for so long.
“I came out there to make some art and that’s what I was gonna do regardless. And once I got into the moment with my music playing, y’know the nervousness kinda went away and it was nothing but me, the skills I built up over the years and my ego,” Jackson said.
The whole event took around a year to plan, bringing in more money than the Theatre had initially put up for the event itself. “That is my biggest accomplishment,” he said.
Despite all the confidence, the live painting shows, the auctions, and the will to succeed, Dion Jackson would not be Deej Cert without all those who have helped him in his artistic career. From family to teachers, Jackson is grateful for all of them.
He cites his uncle as one of his first art mentors,
“My uncle, he’s like a bonafide artist, so he does most of the stuff I do now. Like selling your art, making custom pieces,” he said. “I was always around him and I would kinda like–I used to have a sketchbook that I would draw in and he would kinda go on the next page and remake what I did with correct proportions and good composition.”
But outside his family and home, he also cites some teachers at his alma mater, Norristown Area High School, as big reasons for why he is who is now, artistically.
He cites Rachel Knopf, a graphic design teacher as a big inspiration and a person of input on his graphic work, as well as Lisa Noce, his AP Art teacher, as someone who pushed him to paint more, one of the reasons he chose to physically paint on a canvas during his show.
“[Susan] Guido, fantastic teacher, I had her for Art Majors I and II, she more-so helped me with realism and charcoal work, and just being a little bit more creative and fun with the art,” he said.
But more importantly than teachers and friends, Jackson credits his mom as one of the biggest helps and supporters of his career.
“I don’t know if she knows this, but like my mom bought me the newest iPad, and I know damn well she couldn’t afford it,” he said. “So, I appreciate that a lot, that she had that much faith in me. The only reason I wanted it was to draw on it, and that’s why she bought it. And at this point, I’ve made the money back multiple times over, just off my art, that she paid for the iPad.”
“So, good investment on her part,” he added.
While still only just 18 years old, Deej Cert is well-versed in multiple facets of art, so much so that it would seem like he was a veteran who had been doing art for decades. So, to some other young, aspired artists, similar to how he once was, he provided words of advice:
“You always got a demographic somewhere, somebody [is] always gonna mess with what you do,” he said. “Just keep pushing, keep going. You’re not supposed to blow up immediately. It’s gonna be a slow hike.”
“But once you get your foot in the door, who’s gonna tell you to take it out, right?”

For more of Deej-Cert’s artwork, visit his Instagram here.