Heart Evangelista Ventures into Virtual Art Auctioning
Auctions for art pieces were usually held in an antique house or art gallery. A piece of artwork will be placed for bidding and the highest bidder will be the one to go home with it. For Heart Evangelista’s latest masterpieces, Pluviam and Desiderantium, even the auctioning has gone digital. They are showcased as NFTs or non-fungible tokens.
What is NFT, you ask? It is a form of digital units that are rare and exclusive. It means that the painting or any NFT commodity, such as books, songs, video or virtual clothing, will not be replicated. In essence, should you be the one to win the bidding, you would be the sole owner of the real and original artwork and no one else in the world.
Heart has sold some of her paintings and admits she earns from it. She sold a painting for 3 million pesos at one time and used the earnings as spending money. It motivated her to keep painting but she did so because she enjoyed devoting months, or even a year, conceptualizing and bringing her vision to life on a canvass. Her paintings would often center on images of women, which was the running theme for Pluviam and Desideratium.
“I painted both of these pieces (Pluviam and Desideratium) in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic when Manila was strictly locked down. Like many people, the lockdown was a time of great transition for me. Suddenly, everything going on in my busy life slowed down and for the first time, I was able to be still and contemplate the huge changes that were going on. This is reflected in my paintings. I usually use bright colors but the pieces are very muted. I see a lot of myself in the paintings, which is why my subjects are usually women.”
HEART EVANGELISTA
“In this crazy time, painting is therapeutic for me. None of us can control much during this pandemic and painting provides me with something I can just go for and put my heart into. Creating this piece was like traveling through time – I would immerse myself in creating these little worlds and not even notice that the day had passed. I feel that these pieces immortalize what I felt during the lockdowns. Hopefully, we never have to go through anything like them again, but I’d like viewers of the painting to know what was in my heart at this time,” she adds.
Heart has partnered up with Luis Buenaventura (Cryptopop) and Rodel Colmenar, composer of the Manila Philharmonic, for her first NFT. In case you’re wondering, one does not need to own BitCoins or other cryptocurrency to acquire NFTs. US Dollars, ethereaum and other virtual coins are also accepted.
Do check out OpenSea for more information and you can purchase these digital artwork from #CryptoHeart. The auction ends on November 18, 2021.
