Painting sets Heart Evangelista free
Heart Evangelista gets something out of painting which she doesn’t get from acting. That something is so precious, so important, she wouldn’t dream of letting it go for anything else in the world.
“Iba ang artista. They’re always careful with things they say. They have to answer certain issues. In painting, you don’t have to explain anything. You can finally express the things you wanna say but can’t say,” Heart said at the opening night of “I Am Love Marie: The Art and Works of Love Marie Ongpauco,” her exhibit of 19 oil-on-canvas paintings.
Yes, painting sets Heart free. She calls it “liberating.”
Against the Flow
Instead of giving a big no to something she hates, Heart would rather put her hair up, face her big canvas and create the painting “Against the Flow.”
“I think I draw better when I’m sad,” she tells “Manila Bulletin” editor AA Patawaran.
Needless to say, painting is therapeutic for her. And she’s most in the mood when the scent of lavender fills the air. She can paint more, create more. The more emotional she is, the bigger the canvas.
Bigger and braver
“The bigger it is, the braver you are,” she explains.
You don’t see any small canvas in Heart’s exhibit, which is ongoing until Thursday, May 22 at Ayala Museum’s ArtistSpace.
Many of the paintings are named after women: “Elisa,” “Luna and Celestina,” “Alessandra 2,” “Alessandra 3,” Camilla,” “Lourdes.” The subjects, of course, are women whose faces you have to look closely at to find out what’s in their heart.
Her boyfriend, Sen. Chiz Escudero, seeing how she loses her herself for hours in front of her canvas,
decided to take the paint brush himself and create a few abstract paintings.
Chiz' support
“He’d paint with me. It’s something unique to him. Maganda ang ginawa niya pero hindi siya mag- e-exhibit.”
When Yahoo Philippines caught up with the senator and asked why he chose abstract painting, Escudero replied, “Cause I don’t know how to paint!”
He was just there to support his girlfriend’s rediscovered passion.
“I’ve been sketching since I was three. It’s my first-ever love. I still have five paintings left after our house in Carmona burned down,” says Heart.
Her dad gave her the paintings where she drew her version of Winnie the Pooh and a couple of fruits.
Different eye
Now that she’s grown up, Heart paints “with a different eye.”
Heart just looks at things differently, and she’s never ever bored.
And now that she has more time in her hands, Heart is happy that “I can paint whenever I want.”
She need not be limited by public perception, the way actresses bound by an image are. That’s how Heart would like to be known by her real name, Love Marie, whenever she paints.
“I want to make sure people will see the difference between me as an actress and as an artist.”
Nice feeling
The artist is Love Marie Ongpauco. The actress is Heart Evangelista. They are two entirely separate individuals.
For now, Love Marie is out there, enjoying the thrill, and the freedom of her art.
“It’s a nice feeling that people appreciate you. I think the most flattering thing I ever came across (as an artist) was when someone from Singapore bought three of my paintings even if he did not know me from Adam.”
It also warms her heart to think that fellow showbiz celebrities can find ways of expressing themselves through painting to shatter other people’s impression that they are just pretty faces without a soul.
“I hope this will serve inspiration for a lot of them to express themselves in other ways,” Heart, er Love Marie says.
Her well-heeled guests, businessman Fernando Zobel de Ayala, Sen. Loren Legarda, movie queen Susan Roces, former Senator Manny Villar and broadcast journalist Karen Davila, can attest to this.
