Publication: Texas Monthly, November 1996 issue
Article: "Dual In The Sun"


"Annabel is described as a glove-wearing retired librarian from the Midwest ... she does not make appearances.  Yet while no one has met Annabel, her impastoed oil painting of ominous mountainscapes, voluptuous flowers, and haunting street scenes have won many devotees, including Texas first lady Laura Bush, herself a librarian (although not yet a collector); Dallasites Nona and Richard Barrett, who own an extensive collection of Texas art; and writer Patricia Knop and her husband, screenwriter-director Zalman King (9 1/2 Weeks, The Red Shoe Diaries), of Santa Monica, California.  Annabel early on chose El Paso's Sister city, Juarez, as her primary subject, painting everything from Palm Sunday processions to prostitutes and transvestites in gritty bars.  Though often shadowy, her subjects are infused with an insistent grace,  Flowers are haloed, Van Gogh style, and a diner waitress can seem like the bearer of manna.  In one classic painting, Easter Morning on the Road to Casas Grandes, an enraptured Mexican housewife finds herself levitating several feet above a road.  In Scene From the N Bar, tiny angellike women dance in the palms of a patron perhaps too inebriated to believe his eyes ..."


Read more:
Dewan, Shaila.  "Dual in the Sun" Texas Monthly, November 1996.  Page 68.