Painting masks at the Johnson was exactly what I needed–an hour set aside to de-stress and do something creative. After looking through the museum for inspiration, one of the collections of masks stood out to me: there was a set of black and white masks, where the black masks represented evil and the white purity and goodness. Drawing from this I made my mask half white and half black, but with some details to counteract the strict good/evil separation. The black half has gold swirling across its cheeks in a tree like, flowing pattern, to show that even darkness has filaments of light drifting through it. The white side’s face has tears falling from its eye and a deep blue, crack-like pattern across it to represent how there are always faults even in the purest people. The golden mask around its eyes is for the masquerade we all play, both light and dark.