Rachel Del Bono

Leave Your Message After the Tone

1/3 Oil and acrylic paintings apart of the series "Everyone Leaves Except Me"

““Leave your message after the tone” is based on an emotionally abusive romantic relationship from my adolescents. The painting uses images and symbols that are references to the person involved as well as signifiers of how and why the relationship fell through. The foreground text bubble reading “The person you are trying to reach is emotionally unavailable” represents the emotional turmoil I underwent while the background repetitive text reading “You're not the kind of person I could love” is in reference to the frequent effort on my part, only to end with a blunt sentence that ultimately destroyed my self worth and desire for future romantic endeavours. The figure in the painting is a photo of my ex-partner from this relationship and like the rest of the paintings in this series, they are positioned with eyes shut as if they are blind to the damage they are causing, refusing to meet the gaze of the viewer.”