Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Rachel Del Bono

How Old Are You Now?

The first piece created in my collage portraiture series

“"How Old Are You Now" examines the change in the dynamic of father-daughter relationships throughout adolescence using collage-style painting elements and found photos that reflect my relationship with my father. It contains a painted photograph of my father and myself, taken on his first birthday as a parent. The Landscape section of the painting is a Google street view of the road leading up to his apartment, a road I became very familiar with travelling between my parent’s households. The text next to the portrait is our correspondence exactly 20 years later which read “Happy birthday I love you — Okay”. This drastic difference in affection and emotion displays the gradual disconnect that occurred throughout my childhood; as I grew, became my own person, and how our relationship changed with it. This is common in father-daughter relationships as they age. Creating How Old Are You Now was an emotionally exhaustive process and a way of self-healing. By documenting and preserving what once was, I came to terms with the dissolution of our once-close relationship. How Old Are You Now explores the theme of 20-something by examining the shifting relationship of parent and child through the transitional years of adolescence to adulthood. ”