Wonder Women - The WAU Project exhibition opened in Helsinki city centre two weeks ago. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to show these 12 works and share the stories of these amazing women in the artworks. So empowering and it's touching to see how some visitors have moved to tears because they feel they can relate to these Wonder Women. The feedback has been absolutely wonderful.

The exhibition has got some nice publicity too! The two Finnish daily newspapers Iltalehti and Iltasanomat wrote about the project and pop star Anna Abreu being one of the models. Yle Puhe interviewed me and we got talking about women and equality, the struggles women still face in today's world and body painting as an empowering art form.

So still one week to go, please come and say hi if you you are around!
Akkuna/ LASIPALATSI, Simonkatu 3, 00100 Helsinki. Open Tue-Fri 12-18 and Sat-Sun 11-16.
Welcome!

The artworks and the Wonder Women  -wall calendar 2016 are available for purchase at the exhibition or at Riina Laine Art Store. Part of the proceeds of the sale will be donated to UN Women!

The Non-smoking campaign Body Tells the Story I painted for last autumn has proved to be an amazingly successful concept. We re-created the paintings with the communications agency AC Sanafor this July for SuomiAreena in Pori, Finland and again the campaign was picked up by many news sites and social media. Thought-provoking paintings really pass the message to the viewer and makes you think twice about smoking and what it does to your body.

This campaign has now been praised internationally and I am so happy for AC Sanafor for this acclaim they have received - the campaign won Silver Stevie Award at the 2015 International Business awards and it received Honorary Recognition of Excellence at 2015 Pharmaceutical Information Act of the Year! It was also short-listed at SABRE Awards EMEA 2015 and IPRA Golden World Awards! 

Some links on the news:
Iltalehti: Tempaus Porissa: Hätkähdyttävät vartalomaalaukset paljastavat tupakan tuhot
M&M Markkinointi & Mainonta: AC-Sanafor ja Pohjantähti-Elokuva pokkasivat hopeiset Steviet

You can read my previous blog post about the campaign here:  Body painting as a storyteller.

This year I wasn't competing which was totally new to me. I had thought I would just chill out and enjoy other artists' work, but turns out my week was full of action and activities, I didn't even have time to go for a refreshing swim in the lake! Hot and sunny week included my first workshop at the World Bodypainting Academy program, my fine art body painting exhibition, parties and jury duty at the world awards. So much fun! 

Once again, the highlight of my year was the World Bodypainting Festival in Austria. Since 2007 I have spent a week every summer amongst hundreds of artists and thousands of visitors from all over the world enjoying and indulging on this amazing art form called body painting. There is no place like this - a small village of Pörtschach by Wörthersee lake turned into a melting pot of art for a week. It's our mecca. Our home.  

The workshop "Key elements of competition design" was a success with some wonderful students, fun and laughter. I loved it and even better, that the students were over the moon! I really hope to be able to give workshops like this more, it's so rewarding to see students learning and discovering new skills in themselves. 

What a wonderful opportunity was given to me by Alex Barendrengt, the organiser of the World Bodypainting Festival, and Hotel Schloss Leonstein. I got to have my own fine art body painting exhibition at the hotel and it was an official side event for the festival week. I was so pleased to see so many people there, getting together for drinks and enjoying my art. 

I had 17 artworks in total showing. This was also an amazing chance for to me show preview of my Wonder Women - the WAU project. Six pieces which are done were introduced to the guests and the feedback was overwhelming. People loved the idea behind the series and encouraged me to go forward with the project. It felt so good and especially when two pieces were sold immediately! What a wonderful evening with some awesome people, music and art. Thank you Alex and Jörg Goby of Schloss Leonstein!

More image galleries from the event:
Gallery by Art Fashion Studio/ Dmitri Moisseev - WBF2015: Riina Laine Art Exhibit
Gallery by Bertrand Orsal - Riina Laine's exhibition - WBF 2015
Gallery by Hotel Schloss Leonstein - Hotel Schloss Leonstain meets World Bodypainting Festival 2015

Like the Wonder Women - the WAU Project Facebook page to follow and learn more about the models etc!

After winning the World Awards last year, I decided early on I wouldn't compete this year but instead I'd just have a break and enjoy the festival as a visitor. But what an honour was it to have the invitation to join the jury - to sit behind the same table with six amazing iconic artists. I couldn't refuse of course, but it felt quite surreal (Haha, it would have been good idea for the theme for the finals "Surreal- reshape your reality"!).

As I have written here on my blog before about the judging (Can you judge body painting?) it is a very hard job. I have been in the jury for many body painting competitions around the world, but this time was by far the toughest. Hundreds of artists in different categories, so many wonderful artworks... We sat in the hot jury tent for over 4 hours each day, scoring over 100 paintings each day. It's difficult to describe what it was like - it was humbling, rewarding, tiring, exciting, fun, difficult, everything at the same time. And I am very happy of this experience. I learnt so much and I think this helps me to grow as an artist too. 

Here are some pictures of the fun times I got spend with my fellow jury members. :)

The jury for the World Bodypainting Awards 2015: Ernst Wieser (Austria), Jinny (Canada), Craig Tracy (USA), Gabriela Hajek-Renner (Austria), Fredi Schmid (Switzerland), Riina Laine (Finland) and Scott Fray (USA).

I had one amazing day creating this camouflage body painting for a corporate event. The client was a Finnish paint manufacturer and the event organisers were clever to think of body painting as a fabulous entertainment for the company's party. I introduced the idea of camouflage body art as I thought it would make a nice living artwork for the event. Everyone loved the idea and the outcome was just what we wanted - people loved watching the painting process coming to an end, they took lots of photos and the whole thing became a talking point amongst the guests.

I had an assistant and it took us about 6 hours in total to finish this challenging project. In this kind of work it's important to mark the models' positions and I always work through a camera to really create the illusion of the models disappearing to the background. In camouflage painting it's inecessary for models to get breaks as it is very tiring to stand still with no movement, and as in every job, everyone needs to have food breaks to keep the energy levels up! The two models I had were so lovely and patient that the whole day was just so much fun.

I hope I get more projects like this in the future, I love the challenge of camouflage body painting and it is just such an amazing way to create exciting entertainment at any event!