"...Livingston's interlocking squares remind us that we share the world with other people with whom we are interconnected and interdependent. ...Livingston reminds us that sacred space is all around--it's up to us to reclaim it."
Donna Tennant
Museum and Arts Magazine
"...Annell Livingston...is an abstract expressionist artist of vision, focus and integrity who path..those of Janet Lippincott of Santa Fe and Agnes Martin of Taos. In her new series, "Poems of the Desert," her grid/windows open to a vision containing bright Matisse-like color, sometimes intense, sometimes subtle, sometimes flat, sometimes evoking deep space. She has an exquisite color palette and is always pusing organic shapes inspired by the forms of the desert landscape." --Steve Fox
The Taos Horse Fly April 2010
Annell Livingston's abstract geometrics have great relevance to the modern aesthetic of California. After all, it was Fred Hammersley, Lorser Fietelson, Helen Lundeberg, and Karl Benjamin who generated those first cool, bold paintings...
Stephen Biller
Editor, Guest Life Magazine
"Annell Livingston's paintings are poetry about her environment, created with tenderness. In her poetry there is subtlety of how light changes, how temperature varies, how landform flows, all clocked eye, and a very accepting mind. We slow our pace after seeing her paintings."
"Your show's announcement came today and it is a handsome invitation! Congradulations. The pieces in the folded card look great. I can see the subtle changes you made, and I believe they expanded the visual impact of this series. They have the strength and the power of Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman...." --Katherine Chang Liu, artist and teacher
"Althought Agnes Martin may come to mind, Annell Livingston's approach to grids is hardly minimal. While Martin tries to capture no-mind appropriations of these structures, Livingston is her polar opposite...The most rewarding pieces are those with a lighter touch...Scale, execution and the artist's connection to the process work as they should. Although understated in comparison with the other works, they have more depth...Here Livingston's concerns with considering herself a painter are nullified by the greater demands of being one with the creative current of the moment. Living for these kinds of experiences allows art to disappear into life."
Dean Balsamo
Review "Book of Hours"
"...There is a deeply meditative, spiritual aspect to these paintings...They put me immediately, and somewhat inaccurately in mind of the works of Agnes Martin, but they obviously are done free-hand, unlike Martin's penciled-straight edge-perfect stripes, and the with the small almost imperceptible variations from square to square lies a huge difference. Each square, with each visible stroke, is a kind of prayer. The title of the show, "Book of Hours," highlights their connection with the ritual surrounding the recitation of the breviary, or the Divine Office in the Roman Catholic Church, and their further association with the personalized, decorated Books of Hours created for important personages in the late Middle Ages. In her statement the artist quotes the famous Trappist monk Thomas Merton: "If you let the hours of the day saturate you, and you give them time, something would happen..."
In these equisite works, something does indeed happen."
Tom Collins
Review "Book of Hours"
For the last twenty-two years I have had the honor and the pleasure to represent the incrediable painter, Annell Livingston. Ms. Livingston is the most disciplined and focused painter I have ever experience in my long career in the art business. She paints in her studio more then sixty hours a week for the last forty years. She has the ability to translate her deep intellect into stunning and sophisticated masterpieces. I have never had any doubt that Ms. Livingston's work will be recognized someday in the art world in the same league as Agnes Martin however let me be clear by underscoring the fact that her work is strictly her own in every sense of the word. She is constantly redefining her work with a vision that is very precise and clear. Her work is constantly changing and she rarely takes the same route but is always challenging herself to change as the light of the day changes which is soft and quiet. This is her work, this is her goal to translate light onto paper.
Felicia Ferguson/Director-Owner
Lumina Gallery & Sculpture Gardens
Livingston's intricate grids of delicate, repetitive markings do indeed call up Agnes Martin's spiritual abstractions. She offers a series of works that are decomposed and rearranged still life images that move from contrasty to close-keyed colors in a lively play of positive and negative space. These are handsome and subtly sumptuous works.
Victoria Dalkey
The Sacramento Bee 2013