This is where I started. Just letting the watercolors and paper guide me.

We wear masks to hide our emotions. This is what came from my fingers and unconscious.

We hide our emotions and other things because we are afraid.
 

This is what is behind the mask. Fear, jealousy, failure, being lost, trying to climb to a higher place but fear gets in the way, growth is thwarted, oh no, there is no hope.

Step 2. Spirituality makes its presence. Heaven or Hell? A church stain glass window. A tree that has roots, but no growth. 

Step 3.  Let's face our fears. There are so many--Snakes and sin and jealousy and betrayal. Spiders and skeletons and secrets, Oh My!

Step 3.  Let's start again. 

Before committing paint to paper, let's plan this out a bit. Only fears.

I am frustrated because I want this to be 3D. I want to build a mask and put the fears on the inside and on a blank outside, I want to put the words to the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a Black Poet (1872-1906), "We Wear the Mask"

We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies. 

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

     We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile 

Beneath our feet, and long the miles;

But let the world dream otherwise, 

    We wear the mask!