Heart Evangelista has established herself in the past few years as a fashion star, dressed up by global luxury brands and featured in international style publications. But did you know she’s also one of the more successful artists in the country?
That’s certainly what a viewer of Karen Davila’s YouTube vlog would conclude after watching its episode on Heart Evangelista and husband Chiz Escudero. In the two-part special, Karen interviews the couple about their relationship (they’ve been married six years now) but Heart also shows the broadcast journalist around the Escudero mansion, talks about her art and responds candidly to Karen’s questions on just how much her works go for these days.
Heart reveals she does earn a lot from her paintings. “A lot of my expenses come from my paintings because it started as [telling herself], ‘Don’t touch your savings, you can only spend your painting money.’” Which motivated the star to paint more, although she admits she really enjoys the work. She can devote months to a canvas, sometimes a year, as in a series of romantic paintings featuring multiple images of women. And there are works she even chooses not to part with—even as buyers express their intention to purchase.
Her hand-painted bags can start at Php 200,000, she tells Karen. “But I stopped it because I want it to be limited edition,” Heart says. When asked about the average cost of the artworks she’s sold lately, Mrs Escudero replies by saying she recently sold a painting for Php 3 million. “Yeah, that’s cool,” she adds nonchalantly. Heart says the money is now kept as savings.
At one point in the vlog, Heart leads Karen to one of a few mirror-framed paintings that depict a group of women. The fashion influencer says it might be sold as NFT (non-fungible token), an increasingly popular digital art form where the work can’t be copied. Heart says she can’t sell it yet because “whoever ends up buying [the NFT], the painting can go to them. Some people when they buy the digital painting, they will destroy the original painting so it becomes more expensive.”
Heart says the particular painting she shows the vlog can go up to 3 million USD in price (around Php 150 million) as an NFT. “It’s a different world,” Heart tells a shocked Karen Davila.
Heart has been painting since she’s very young, as evidenced by a framed still life of an orange she says was exhibited at the Ayala Museum in 1997 when she was but a girl of 12. Later on, painting would serve as refuge to the style star, a hobby she dove into when she was at a crossroads in her show biz career.