Finnish Queer Artist H-P Lehkonen
H-P Lehkonen is a Finnish queer artist who’s work discusses sustainability, social issues and queer life.
H-P knew he wanted to be an artist and create comics as soon as he began his higher education, which included the prestigious Liminka School of Arts. A storyteller at heart, H-P uses his comics to relate artistic and life skills to his audience.
H-P is a distinguished comic artist. He is the only guest lecturer of web comics in Finland, and he has given nearly 100 lecturers in both Finland and abroad. In 2017, his work won the PRISM Award for Small Press Comic. His comics have been exhibited in Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. He is a long time board member and the recent chairman of the Finnish Comics Society, and H-P has won eight national or local grants for his art and artwork.
However, H-P’s career has been met with obstacles. Being transgender, H-P had to overcome institutional sexism in the years before he transitioned. In the years since, he has found support among queer and feminist comic artists who made a space for themselves and their creative works.
Future goals
H-P’s largest goal is to lift up Finnish queer comics as a whole. His constant goal is for people to see themselves in the pages of his stories. He wants people to relate to his art and grow from it.
A proponent of zero-waste and sustainability lifestyles, H-P lives with a non-traditional family of creative-minded people who share a house full of plants in Vantaa, Finland.
Want to invite H-P to your event? Interested in hiring him to make comics? Contact him through this form!
H-P’s work
Life Outside the Circle is a story of Sami, a Finnish queer artist, who inherits a house in the countryside. He moves in expecting to live a more authentic life, but things aren’t as easy. His neighbor, single dad Juha helps him out and they fall in love.
Immortal Nerd is a scifi humor comic that tells a story about a lazy meme archeologist Nokia, who lives on the space station New Rauma. Nokia’s parents get tired of supporting their no-good child, so Nokia gets sent to the old earth to study. There Nokia learns a lot about the earth and ends up saving it!
Millenials Kill is an anti-capitalist thriller queer mafia comic parody. It’s about Millenials who kill things, people, economies… you name it. Adin Herrera is a journalist who really wants to win a Pulizer, so gets mixed up with a very sexy man named Cecil. But Cecil seems to have a dark secret… (Millenials Kill has alt texts that make it possible to read the comic with a screen reader!)
H-P makes many kinds of comic essays about sustainability. Previous themes have been Communal Living, Ecofascism and (Un)ethical Brands. These comics can be found on H-P’s Patreon for $3/month.
H-P also makes a large variety of short comics about plants, gardening, sustainability, nature, trans issues and zero waste movement. Those can be found on H-P’s blog. (Alt texts for screen reader option are coming later.)