Annell Livingston’s sixty-year artistic odyssey rejected the societal expectations of the small, conservative town of La Porte, Texas where she grew up in the 1950s. Rather than be limited by the narrow career options available to women in that era, she pursued her passion for painting. Moving first to Houston in the late 1980s and eventually relocating to Taos in the mid-‘90s, Livingston’s journey reflects her resilience and determination. Her artistic evolution, from urban grids to the enchanting landscapes of New Mexico, encapsulates the diverse, ever changing nature of creativity. In a world inundated with information, this artist reminds us of the beauty found in embracing patterns, both in art and life.
Livingston’s meticulous, hard-edged, gridded paintings set her apart in a digital age dominated by precision. Her hand-painted shapes create optical illusions reminiscent of Op Art, and yet she distinguishes herself by introducing dynamic color shifts, adding an element of unpredictability. The artist introduced diagonal lines to her grid-work while in Taos, making the work not only less expected, but enabling her geometric complexity to flirt with the organic. In dialogue with the artist, Livingston clearly states her current preference for working primarily on paper with color-shifting vinyl emulsion after having painted with gouache for more than a decade. Describing herself as a hard-edged painter, she discuses her transition from the urban-inspired grids of the early 1990s to the addition in the 2010s of the random diagonal lines that distinguish her Taos work.
“Though I have worked in many mediums, I have chosen to work primarily on paper; painting and drawing. My choice of medium now is vinyl emulsion. I am a hard-edge painter. I have been seriously working with grids since the early nineties. When I lived in Houston, I worked with grids made up of squares. I thought of the grid as a metaphor for the urban experience. Upon moving to Taos, New Mexico, it was the addition of the diagonal line. It is the diagonal line which allows me to think of the landscape of New Mexico; rivers, mountains, and sky. It is not that I expect the viewer to see what I see, but it is to explain where my inspiration comes from. As I organize forms in space my mind travels, and dreams of far-away places and other worlds.”
