Women in academia who also happen to be mothers faced disadvantages even before the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions (Minello et al., 2021). Pre-pandemic, gender disparities existed both at home (division of household labor and childcare) and at work (women historically have a harder time achieving the same as men at all levels of academic careers); the pandemic only exacerbated these disparities (Minello et al., 2021; Murgia & Poggio, 2019).

This creative scholarship unpacks those disparities, the mental load, and the many roles of academic mothers via critical autoethnographic lens through the medium of an analogue collage. The medium was selected for this work intentionally: it is a physical artifact constructed using simple methods to unpack complex concepts. It connects to the primal self, expressing emotional, cognitive, and physical engagement with the world utilizing an art form developed in Asia (Hajian, 2022) and advanced by the Cubists, including Picasso, who used collages to disrupt the world of fine art (Leighton & Groom, 2022).

This autoethnographic work explores the interconnected identities, influences, and expectations of an academic working mother, connecting all parts of Self into a single artifact that is layered upon itself, hiding and revealing pentimento that forms both the shape of a landscape and reveals the hidden thoughts of self, doubt, love, loss, disappointment, and achievement. The collage was created by layering paint with deconstructed artifacts of visual culture to imply a landscape: a metaphor for life and mother. Landscapes are ubiquitous and are often taken for granted—as we encounter them, decorate with them, and alter them—but looking closer we see that landscapes are complex and layered, like people, and the pentimento revealed shows depth and connections the Gestalt does not. In this work, the pentimento reveals a mental landscape—a pentimental—of one academic mother.