In early 2020, Denise Di Novi — the producer of five Tim Burton classics, five film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels and two versions of “Little Women” — began an unexpected journey from Hollywood hitmaker to abstract expressionist painter. The sudden death of Scott Farrow, her husband of five years, had Di Novi drowning in sorrow. Almost immediately after, COVID-19 virtually shut down the nation, and three days into the pandemic, Di Novi decided to put her feelings on paper.
“I was trying to keep my brain from exploding and the act of drawing connected me to something else beside the panic and shock,” she recalls. “I felt I had to do it, like this was a place for both my love for my husband and for my grief to go.” She quickly moved on to paint, letting her emotions out in a flood of color and movement and slathering her canvases with texture.
“There could be 10 to 12 layers of paint and then I destroy a lot of it with knives and scrapers,” she says. “It’s a physical and emotional release. I feel anger, I feel joy.
I feel peace. And it connects me to the beauty in life.” Now Di Novi has her debut exhibition running through Sept.
14 at the Honarkar Foundation in Laguna Beach. Di Novi is giving all of her portion of the sales to the Selah Carefarm, a grief therapy center she attended in Arizona. The art on view defies quick categorization.
Some works reference to the Earth, the sun, the sea, underwater flora, windows and doors, but her style is r.