Artist Angie Crabtree’s New Opal Series Debuts at Roseark

If you were at JCK Luxury 2018 you may remember a willowy, elegantly dressed creature painting a diamond outside the Mandalay Bay Ballroom. You probably knew it was Angie Crabtree, even with her back to you, just by looking at the canvas. Her work is just that well-known, as are many of her collaborators, from Forevermark and Chopard to the handbag designer Paige Gamble.

Crabtree’s latest partner is the Los Angeles–based retailer (and agenda-setter extraordinaire) Roseark, a famously cooler-than-cool gallery-format store that habitually launches A+ talent across fine jewelry, art, home furnishings, and other one-of-a-kind luxuries. (It also happens to be one of our all-time favorite Instagram feeds.)

There, for the next two months, an Angie Crabtree exhibit will be on view. Called “Lit: Opals, Diamonds and Light,” the show’s opening reception is being held on Dec. 6 from 12 to 4 p.m.

Though Crabtree documents her artistic process for her fans and followers quite regularly, “Lit” includes works that have never left her studio—until now. Crabtree’s particular métier is diamonds, from antique carré cuts to crazy-precise round brilliants with heart-and-arrow facets, but the artist has also been exploring other gemstones. Her latest focus? The fiery patterns and rainbow-tinted luster of everyone’s favorite thing right now: opals.

Angie Crabtree with paintings in studio — *Diamond painter Angie Crabtree, pictured here in her Bay Area studio, has been dabbling in colored stones.*

Just completed this fall, Crabtree’s opal homages are making their debut for the first time with “Lit.” According to the artist’s exhibit notes: “Opals are a visual counterpoint to the hard angles and light refraction that diamonds provide, and are experiencing a resurgence in the contemporary imagination.”

Angie Crabtree Skye opal painting — *Crabtree has an opal fixation. Here she is photographed with her painting titled* Skye.

Crabtree’s opal paintings capture the gorgeous colors that glow from within an opal with remarkable accuracy and show the nuances and particularities of the stone in macro-lens detail. As such, the multitude of colors and flashes of light have an engulfing quality. Who hasn’t gotten lost in the depths of a good Australian opal and the way its colors change with the light? Crabtree’s paintings have the same effect.

“Lit: Opals, Diamonds and Light” will be on view through January 31, 2019.

Below, a snapshot of some of the “gems” on display.