ACTIVE: 2000-
Paleface is a Finnish rap artist, writer, and activist who has been releasing music since the early 2000’s.
At first he rapped in English, but since 2010 mainly in Finnish. Paleface could be described as left-leaning, and he has been active at many political and social events. A man with his heart in the right place, so to speak.
My first encounter with his music was most likely through our mutual friend with similar values, Steen1. Paleface appeared on a few of Steen1’s tracks even before his first Finnish album came out and Steen1 had nothing but good things to say about Paleface and his music.
While working on the material for my very first solo exhibition around 2011–2012, I listened extensively to Paleface’s first Finnish-language album, Helsinki Shangri-La. It’s great painting music, if you ask me, and I still consider it one of my favourite Finnish hip hop releases. Even so, it took me years before I actually drew anything related to Paleface. The first sketch I came across is the one you see here, made in 2022.
In addition to a couple of Paleface sketches, I also have quite a few based on his songs waiting to be published in future updates of this site.
PALEFACE x 2 | pencil & fineliner on paper | 2022, 2025