Actor now artist: Johnny Depp sells $3.6 million worth of his pop-art portraits

According to Merriam-Webster, a Renaissance man is “a person who has wide interests and is an expert in several areas.”

Actor Johnny Depp may qualify as something of a Renaissance man, after a collection of his paintings recently sold for more than $3 million a few hours after his creations went up for sale.

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Depp sold the art through Castle Fine Art hours after he announced the sale on Instagram.

A collection of four paintings, which was called “Friends and Heroes,” included images that the actor and singer painted of people who inspired him, BBC News reported.

Depp’s art was created using photographic references that were “stripped back to a simpler and iconic portrayal of the subject,” Castle Fine Art said on its website.

“I’ve always used art to express my feelings,” Depp said in a statement posted on the gallery’s website.

“My paintings surround my life, but I kept them to myself and limited myself. No one should ever limit themselves,” he said.

Some of the people who Depp immortalized on canvas include legends such as Al Pacino, Bob Dylan and Elizabeth Taylor.

Depp said the paintings “reflect on those who matter most to me, like my family, friends and people I admire.”

Another image depicts Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards, Sky News reported. Richards played Depp’s on-screen father in two of “The Pirates of the Caribbean” films, and on who Depp partially based his role as Jack Sparrow.

Depp and the gallery sold a total of 780 images, with most prints fetching nearly $4,800 each. The four main images of Pacino, Taylor, Richards and Dylan went for about $18,000 for the group, Sky News reported.

Depp, along with being an actor and now artist, is also a singer with his band of other A-listers such as Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, Alice Cooper and Tommy Henricksen, called Hollywood Vampires, which toured Europe over the past two months. He has also recently performed with Jeff Beck, the gallery said.

Depp recently won a defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard. Heard was ordered to pay Depp $10.3 million,but Depp was also found liable and was ordered to pay Heard $2 million, CBS News reported.

Heard’s attornies have informed the Virginia courts that they plan to appeal the ruling. Depp has also filed appeals in response to Heard’s filings, his attorney told CBS News.

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Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial: What you need to know Depp sued Heard for libel over a 2018 article she wrote in The Washington Post. (NCD)

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