Experience the work of two representational painters who explore the world around them with great sensitivity. Meet Mark Giaimo and Eric Westbrook during this evening opening reception.

Mark Giaimo: Largely self-taught in a number of creative disciplines: an award-winning politicalcartoonist, an illustrator and a alt-rock recording artist, Mark Giaimo enrolled in his first oil painting class in 2004 upon moving to DC, and within two years was accepted into the Post-Baccalaureate Graduate Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he finished a semester before striking out on his own. Whether painting still lifes of cheap plastic toys, portraits of friends or melodramatic narratives, Mr. Giaimo mixes the mundane with the sacred, 19th century academic techniques with contemporary pulp and graphic illustration, that is both an homage and satire to the past and present.

Eric Westbrook: Westbrook is a professional artist, illustrator, and instructor living and working in Washington, DC. His paintings have been shown extensively in solo and group shows in and around the Washington DC area. Recent exhibitions of his paintings have been held at Dumbarton Concert Gallery, Gallery Plan B, and the Arts Club of Washington. Paintings are held in private collections as well as in the permanent collection of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Recent work has focused on a series of portrait/figure paintings, featuring female subjects posed in dreamlike landscape settings. He is currently accepting portrait commissions. His illustrations have been published by magazine, corporate, and government clients nationwide and internationally. Clients include Apple, National Public Radio, NASDAQ, Ernst & Young, the White House, Habitat for Humanity, and the Washington Opera.