FOR THE ART OF IT
A hillside at dawn, two artists, two mediums – and a conversation that begins with the same landscape and ends somewhere entirely different.
For the Art of It is a new collaborative collection by Northland jeweller Christine Price, bringing together handcrafted fine jewellery and visual art through a shared creative response to place, memory, and fleeting moments of beauty. The project invites two artists to interpret the same experience independently, through different mediums, without illustrating one another's work. What emerges is a conversation – between jewellery and art, between two people looking at the same thing and seeing it differently.
The inaugural collaboration pairs Christine with Richard Cranenburgh of Art Northland, a painter known for his expressive landscapes and ability to distil mood, colour, and feeling from the natural world. Their shared starting point is a landscape both know intimately.
From different vantage points, Christine and Richard look across the same native bush-clad hill range – a constantly shifting vista that reveals new moods through light, mist, seasons, and weather. Sometimes the changes are subtle. Sometimes they are extraordinary enough to stop everything else entirely.
The moment that inspired the first work, The Hour Before, came during the stillness before dawn. A ribbon of mist drifted across the hills while muted greens, lavender tones, and the first traces of golden light emerged across the landscape. Christine responded by handcrafting a pair of earrings composed of one hundred natural gemstones – green and purple sapphires and diamonds, set in white gold with accents of 18ct yellow gold – capturing the quiet arrival of morning. The piece was brought to completion by master stone setter Paul Cosson, whose meticulous craftsmanship was integral to realising the finished work.
Working from the same moment, Richard Cranenburgh created an original painting that offers a parallel interpretation. The same stillness, the same light, captured through paint rather than stone and gold, invites a dialogue between two vastly different mediums.
Driven by artistic exploration rather than commercial release, each work in the For The Art Of It collection will remain one of a kind, offered privately to collectors who connect with the story behind it. The Hour Before marks only the beginning – an ongoing series of collaborations between jewellery and other artistic disciplines, open to all artists who feel drawn to the conversation.
www.christinepricegoldsmith.co.nz | 021 026 31268
