Responsibility by John Sanborn, part of The FEAR Quartet, plunges us into the burdensome reality of adulting, encapsulating the various kinds of weight we carry throughout our lives. In synergy with the larger collection’s exploration of fear's omnipresence, this artwork expresses our latent dread of the manifold responsibilities that accrue as we traverse through life, illuminating our tacit ownership of the world and the ceaseless struggle to balance its accompanying duties and debts.

Breathe in and breathe out. An automatic function our bodies acknowledge without question. After that breather, we are burdened with expectations, debt, doubt, projections, anticipation, guilt, threats, knowledge, relationships, health issues, learned experience, children, and sex. We own the world and must figure out how to pay for it all. - John Sanborn