Dino Vapaavuori: Your dad just calls me Katya, 2018, spray, acryl, marker pens and glitter on canvas, 176 cm x 134 cm.

The execution and order of all my portraits is relatively same. When I enter my studio, the performance begins. While working, I manage to get myself into a state, which I would call a trance. I keep listening to the same disco music, I do things routinely and almost spontaneously and without thinking that much  - I suppose you could call my style expressive. I´m not interested in creating realism corresponding to photograph or outcome which is otherwise too polished. I rather rely on coincidence, feelings and colours!

The most successful painting in a series of five works of art from last spring (in the picture) was a painting I made during one night starting from the foundation, drawing and ending in a completed painting. It was a dramatic process until the last brush stroke and I still get the shivers when thinking about it. All the practice and routines I had ever made boiled down to this. For the first time ever I felt I had really succeeded as a painter!

Series Drag Queen Portraits is a result of a long and thorough stalking. Drag Race program is absolutely perfect as a program combining the masculine wish to compete against others but in a very feminine type of competition. The contradiction and humour of the program are culminated at the end of the program in lip sync-competition, where the competitors are made to lip sync against each other as if they were running for their lives. Drag is much more than just entertainment, it crushes gender roles and is an initiator of trans rights. It is a visually imposing form of art and a political statement.

It's cool that my art is honestly available for everyone to see and even to buy, if you wish to

I´m inspired by social media and pop culture phenomena. Nowadays I mostly use Instagram to present my art, instead of a gallery. It´s cool that my art is honestly available for everyone to see and even to buy, if you wish to. I have an online shop where I sell printouts of my works at a very low price. I want to shake all elitism off my art and I´d rather get it to every home than just gather dust in some collection. It can, of course, be bought for collections, too!

Through social media I also stay in contact with people I´ve painted. In the future I hope to have e.g. more of some kind of cooperation, and I´ve already put some into action.

Dino Vapaavuori was born in 1990 and currently lives and works in Tampere. He graduated from the Degree Programme in Fine Arts in 2017. Star sign: Taurus.

Instagram & EtsyShop: @kovisdino