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# A Future Without Fear
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/sarah-slavick-a-future-without-fear/
- Published: 2018-12-08T15:00:56.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:09:17.000Z
- Description: Like many Americans, I’m in a constant, heightened state of stress and shame.
- Author: Sarah Slavick
- Tags: Art, Drawing, Weekend, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/12/sarah-slavick-closing-in-oilcanvas-2622-x-2522-2018-copy-2.jpg)

Sarah Slavick “Closing In” (2018), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches (image courtesy the artist)

This painting, “Closing In,” was created in July 2018 during a grueling week of sleepless nights full of the haunting voices of separated children, crying for their mamas and papas. The echoes of those cries return when I read about tear gas attacks on migrant families on the border, and children being tortured, drugged, and abused as many remain separated from their parents.

Like many Americans, I’m in a constant, heightened state of stress and shame. These dark times have the potential to enclose us in despair: a daily onslaught of ecological destruction, white supremacy and racism, the dismantling of safety nets and public education, a pandering to the wealthiest among us, and lies, lies, and more lies.

Yet while my stomach churns, I know that hope is a luminous power. It’s the embrace of an opening, a path to transformation, and a way out of the atrocities and terror to an unknown creation, a possible future without fear.

I look for the light, to find community with those who recognize the climate crisis, who believe Black Lives Matter, and who welcome the refugee.