In many paintings, hope for the future is confidently represented by images of family and children. In Our Future, by Octavi Caneda of Spain (Cat.210), a solitary child holding a map in his hand embodies innocence and humanity. The barefooted Australian girl in Ann Grocott’s New Generation: Ancient Land (Cat.6),
stands posing in a landscape: the future belongs to her. The 18 year-old Korean international prizewinner, 
Chang Jee Hui, also links past, present, and future, looking out from her self-portrait drawing (Cat.205), eager and expectant. However, in other paintings, the lot of children is presented as a desperate one. Omar Belliard of the Dominican Republic shows the reality of life for millions (Cat.42). An impoverished child sits dreaming in his shanty home of the life he could have, but is denied. He appears without family, food, shelter, and possessions. He has no opportunity, only his dream. Voltaire Perez from the Philippines considers the same subject in his painting Tomorrow’s Dream (Cat.172). 
The monochromatic top half of his picture presents two children in a polluted industrial landscape, sitting by a stream into which they gaze. The colour reflection in the stream represents their dream, showing the children in the same place, which has now been transformed into a beautiful, green woodland scene. The artist tellingly remarks: ‘We must remember that children’s dreams are made to come true’.
In the painting Dark Dream by Hyder Shah, a self-taught artist from Pakistan (Cat.161), the scene is even grimmer. Naked, starving, and homeless babies and children are shown in the midst of a world torn apart by conflict and environmental degradation. Although it is a depressing spectacle witnessed nightly on television news screens worldwide, the painting seems better to encapsulate what is a living, everyday reality for so many. It reveals the artist’s intensity of feeling and sense of desperation. Hidden in the chaos of the desolation is an hour glass; the sand pouring away for the lives of children without hope and for a world seemingly beyond repair. In an equally distressing but forceful image by 
Kenya’s Sebastian Kiarie (Cat.128), citizens are crushed by the weight of oppression personified, from which there is no respite.
Both male and female artists considered the predicament of women in various parts of the world. Aria Shokouhi Eghbal from Iran paints an ambiguous portrait of a woman from her imagination (Cat.101). She seems to be looking through a gap in a door or curtains. Is she emerging or withdrawing? Whichever, she appears to have strength of purpose, control over her situation, and cunning. The painting appears to be a symbolic representation of the underlying strength of women who, though behind the scenes, have authority of presence and influence. Richard Kimanthi of Kenya pictures woman as the personification of resilience, independence, and adaptability. 
His red and gold painting Living Single (Cat.127) shows the commanding figure of a mother, her arms protecting two children. The artist explains his aim was: ‘to convey my ideas through my vision, because shouting about them was not enough’. In Year 2000, So What? (Cat.136), an enigmatic painting of a man and woman on a beach, Chang Fee Ming from Malaysia chooses not to show the upper half of the woman at all. It is sufficient for him to represent the inner and outer strength of woman by painting in meticulous detail a firm hand placed on a hip: ‘Whatever the future brings’, he observes, ‘the stamina is there’.
