New home in NYC for this beauty #TheGreatEscape .
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👄🍹 Repost @cynthiacorbettgallery 'The Great Escape' "Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. America has #Lichtenstein we have @DeborahAzzopardi. Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the #PopArt line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. #Feminine. Whereas his lines are male, brash and clunky. And her humour is distinctively #British. With the slap-and-tickle, kiss-me-quick, fun of Carry On films and quintessentially #English seaside-pier-art where you poke your head through the cut-out cartoon, putting yourself in the picture. “Flash, bang, wallop! What a picture! What a photograph!” (Tommy Steele as Arthur Kipps in the London musical, ‘Half a Sixpence’). We’ve all been there done that, to be a part of visual curvaceous comedy as breasts spill over necklines, buttocks plump under panties and Y-Fronts jockey as floppy sun hats, on the English seaside coast.
Although her large colour surfaces may be simple and basic, she knows how colour works, how to use colour, so she’s not afraid to be simple and basic. It’s natural. Instinctive, like good sex is. Azzopardi’s art makes me think of the poster for ‘The Graduate’ movie when Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft) puts on her stockings to seduce Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman). There is something ‘Wonder Woman’-esque about her colourful pictures that makes you believe the girl is the superhero who triumphs not with punches or kicks, but with love. Images, as bright and bold as I used to be. Indeed can be again, for something about them makes me feel young, like I’m standing by the Fountain of Youth. Youth symbolizes incorruptible purity.
If you think her paintings are lively, you should meet her in person! She’s got a personality that stands out like one of her paintings and a laugh that’s vivacious and colourful. When Jackson Pollock said, “Every good painter paints what he is”, he’d surely be talking about Deborah Azzopardi ….” extract from the foreword to #DeborahAzzopardi’s book ‘Sshh…’ by esteemed art critic #EstelleLovatt FRSA. @estellelovatt
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