1997 Flower and Garden Extravaganza

In recognition of the first annual Flower and Garden Week in King County the Jeffrey Moose Gallery is proud to announce the 1997 Flower and Garden Extravaganza, an exhibition of outstanding floral and garden theme artwork.

"Two Iris," by gallery artist Claudia McKinstry, will be the poster image for this show. The poster will be distributed at over 200 locations in King County. Ms. McKinstry's work in floral images is remarkable; her detailed, enlarged acrylics of Iris, Sunflowers, Daffodils and others are striking in that so much personality is evident in each surreal effort. The flowers seem practically capable of speech. Ms. McKinstry's career includes numerous solo and group shows including two exhibitions in Russia, a stint as owner of her own gallery in Puyallup, the destruction of an entire exhibit by hurricane Iwa in Hawaii and a solo showing of work last year in the Jeffrey Moose Gallery and The Painted Table restaurant.

Peggy Brunton, another regular exhibitor at the gallery, has an equally distinguished career. Her style of painting in oils is more akin to Vuillard and Monet and she actively consults work of Old Masters in her search for the essence of classical painting techniques. With an MFA from the University of Washington and plenty of teaching experience, Ms. Brunton's career has landed her numerous prizes and elite purchases including acquisitions by the Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and United States embassies in London and Madrid. Her work has also been donated to a variety of fund-raisers and charities and her efforts in the medium of set design have graced numerous theatrical productions.

Kimberly Boggin is another local artist particularly fond of flowers and gardens as subject matter. Her work differs from that of Ms. McKinstry and Ms. Brunton in her use of unusually bright, sunlit scenes exploding with color. She paints scenes from the most rare of Northwest days. Her application of oil paint is crisp and straightforward. As an artist with a former successful career as a business administrator, she is particularly productive and her enthusiasm is evident in each work.

Christina Imm is the most unusual artist of the group. Her style is equally meticulous to that of Ms. McKinstry but differs radically in scale. As a member of a national society of scientific illustrators, she has been commissioned to illustrate numerous species of plants and animals. Her work occasionally strays from straight scientific observation with the inclusion of insects which have some relationship to the plant subject, adding much charm to the image. Her efforts are so well considered that one was selected for inclusion in a summer 1997 exhibit celebrating 150 years of scientific illustration at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Science and Technology in Washington D.C.