Portrait of the Artist as a Wife and Mother

Rita Pearson has two young children, a full-time job, a self-absorbed husband, and an alcoholic father who suddenly moves in with her while he is being treated at the VA hospital. What she doesn’t have is time to breathe or time to pursue her long-postponed dream of painting. Rita struggles through frustration, self-doubt, depression, and anger as she moves forward in fits and starts towards her dream of becoming an artist. Will she succumb to the depression that drove her mother to suicide? Will she give in to the anger she fears will destroy everything she loves? We follow Rita through one day a month for nine months as she embarks on a series of self-portraits of her various faces: the Woman Who Carried Things Around, the Angry Bitch, the Geisha Plate Spinner, Shiva with Spatulas and Sandwich Bags, Hercules Battling the Hydra, and Odalisque. Rita is a heroine for our times, facing the innumerable daily struggles every wife and mother who wishes to have a life of her own must face.