Early Work

Neal was influenced by the surrealist style of Hughie Lee-Smith, such as his depiction of inexplicable poles and balloons in his image of young girl, 1957, and in his Status Seekers, 1963. Status Seekers and Neal’s painting of a man with a balance (at the beginning of the exhibition), as well as Charles McGee’s Mask, c. 1962 and Jon Lockard’s If I Were Jehovah (later in the exhibition) refer to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s c. 1895 poem “We Wear the Mask,” which poignantly describes the lives of Black people in America.

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 oh, great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and the long mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!