Annie Ruth conjures that interior fire, offering a similarly fierce rendering of Black women’s historical resolve with her painting The Door. Seeing herself as a “community mama,” Ruth gives us a self-portrait that is simultaneously a picture of collective identity. There is not one face but three, at once distinct and merging, overflowing the borders between the picture plane and surrounding matte. The Door accentuates the permeability of boundaries, whether between self and society, younger and older generations, race and gender politics, surrealism and expressionism. In an interview about the piece, Ruth describes the process of pouring herself onto the canvas, asking viewers to consider the faces as, among other things, a portrayal of complex psychology. She is a community mama in a time of racial upheaval, and she is a painter-poet in a world that too often devalues these arts. She is also a loving daughter whose mother struggled with cancer, and whose art provided a means of coping with the pain. Yet as The Door embodies an attempt at healing, it also validates the varied and unpredictable effects of art on its viewers. The experience of art, as Ruth understands it, involves an overlapping or merging of selves with diverse histories and influences, and in so many combinations we can only dimly anticipate the outcomes.
                                                                                                                                      - Cincinnati Art Museum

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