winters as being wombs of white and cold comforted by his mother's cooking and his visits to various Greek relatives. Raised in a Greek household, the artist grew up to speak English, Greek, and French and the cosmopolitan cultural environment proved to be a major influence on the artist's political and cultural outlook. West Palm Beach, 1974–1986 When Magalios was 7 years-old his family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. The shift from rich and colorful Montreal to provincial South Florida proved to be a dramatic one. The artist's father signed him up for little league baseball as a way to get initiated into American culture and this game would prove to be a formative experience in his relationship to the United States. Around the age of 8 Magalios's mother had him take painting lessons for the first time. The artist was told by the teacher, an established painter of portraits, that he should "stick to baseball" since his art skills were "limited at best". The artist first remembers painting a clown portrait based on a magazine photo. During his youth, the artist developed a reputation for pranks and athletic prowess on the baseball diamond. Around the age of 12 the artist is said to have begun a serious study of the music of Led Zeppelin, a band Magalios often lists as an influence on his work to this day. Soon after George A. Magalios discovered the work of Vincent Van Gogh when his mother bought him his first art book, a retrospective of the painter's work that the artist is said to still own and refer to for inspiration today. At Cardinal Newman High School Magalios hovered between athlete and artist and developed a reputation that defied easy classification because of his ability to hit a fastball 400 feet and appreciate the nuances of The Smiths, The Church, R.E.M. and Echo and the Bunnymen. Gainesville, 1986–1989 Upon graduating from high school Magalios attended the University of Florida where he began to study political theory and art history. It was during this time in Gainesville that he began to paint more seriously as he undertook a series of oils on canvas depicting the chromatic tendencies of the human face as it responded to various emotional stimuli. It is believed that only three of these paintings are extant. It was at the University of Florida where Magalios first developed a reputation