Colere x Katherine Throne
Each month, Boutique Connection supports Sanderson Contemporary Art’s exhibition openings.
This is a collaboration of wine and art pairing where we pair a handcrafted New Zealand wine with the artist’s hero piece. The project explores how taste and texture can echo a visual experience and perhaps even enhance it.
I’m exploring the non-verbal dialogue between art and wine and pairing each artist’s hero piece with a wine that echoes its mood, energy, and emotion.
The aim is to translate visual expression into taste, inviting viewers to experience the artwork through another sensory lens. Each match is intuitive and collaborative, celebrating both the artist’s vision and the craft of our boutique producers.
Katherine Throne
Katherine Throne is a contemporary painter based in Wānaka whose work is deeply inspired by the resilience, energy and beauty of the natural world. Through her works she captures not simply the appearance of flowers and gardens, but the vitality they hold.
Her paintings immerse the viewer in a world where light, movement and texture become almost tangible, inviting us to feel the lavishness of petals, the friction of stems and the energy that exists within a flourishing garden.
The Swing of Things
When Katherine described her hero piece, The Swing of Things, she spoke of her garden in summer happiness, where an afternoon breeze moves through the flowers while birds and insects create a constant sense of motion. The painting isn't simply about a garden; it's about the feeling of being immersed within one. There is warmth, generosity and an effortless vitality that invites you to linger.
Beneath that joy sits the quiet philosophy of her exhibition, Labour of Love. Katherine speaks of reverence for nature and for those who tend it. The garden's beauty isn't accidental; it is cultivated through patience, observation and care. The Swing of Things feels like the reward for that devotion... a fleeting moment when everything is alive, flourishing and perfectly in balance.
The wine immediately recalled the atmosphere of the painting for me. A blend of 60% Sauvignon Blanc and 40% Pinot Noir, Florette carries delicate floral aromatics, bright citrus and gentle summer berry fruit, all wrapped in a freshness that feels like a warm breeze moving through a garden.
Then there was the name; Florette, which evokes flowers blooming, quietly reinforcing Katherine's celebration of the garden and the beauty that comes from careful cultivation.
Knowing the vineyard is organically farmed adds another layer to the pairing. Like Katherine's garden, it is a place where biodiversity is welcomed, where insects, wildflowers and healthy soils all play their part. Both the painting and the wine celebrate the beauty that emerges when nature is given the space to flourish.
Together, the work and the wine celebrate nature in motion. Both remind us that beauty is rarely created in an instant, but through patience, care and quiet attention. They invite us to slow down, breathe deeply and savour the simple pleasure of a summer afternoon when everything feels wonderfully alive.
Enjoy!
- Renée Dale
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Katherine Throne
Labour of Love24 June - 19 July 2026
Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Labour of Love featuring a new suite of paintings by Katherine Throne.
The suite of canvasses making up Labour of Love burst with botanical energy. Based on the garden that wraps around her studio, these paintings are a celebration of the garden that Wanaka-based Katherine Throne has nurtured from the thin soil in Otago.
Alongside their joyous optimism, these paintings have a definitive physicality. Like the plants she has lovingly coaxed outside, the work on display is the result of hard-won labour. The act of creating is filled with trial, error, success and failure, and yet for Throne, the urge to create is constant. The intertwining of her labour both outside and in the studio are the subject of this exhibition.
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- Dr Penelope Jackson MNZM
Read more here.
