Larry Gagner (Jr.) was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1943. His family moved to Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida, when he was ten to take over ownership of a beachside motel built by his grandparents in the middle fifties. Larry excelled in football, basketball, and baseball throughout HS., earning a football scholarship to Florida in 1962. Later, he graduated as a graphic design major, but discovered a keen interest in painting while doing so. He became an All-American gator football player in 1965 and was drafted in the 2nd round by the Steelers. He was starting left guard for four straight years until an automobile accident cut his career short. He returned to Florida to do some graduate word in painting.

Larry has exhibited in all the major sidewalk art festival shows throughout Florida, receiving his fair share of prizes and awards. He’s had a couple of one-man shows at The Casements Gallery in Ormond Beach, FL and The TECO Gallery in Tampa. He’s been featured in numerous newspaper articles and TV promotionals, and was included in the exclusive art exhibition “Art and the Athlete” presented in Madison Square Garden. One of his artworks is in the permanent collection of the Cades Museum in Gainesville, Fl. Additionally, Larry’s autobiography, Dancing in the Shadows, captures some of the more amusing aspects of his colorful existence. And his inventive SignsSublime.com visual Christian ministry is available as a teaching tool for any Protestant Christian churches.

He presently resides in Tampa with his wife, Doris, and two cats, Stella Gene and Pepper.

PS:Yeah, that’s a dollar bill’s pyramidal “seeing eye” inserted where the thumb hole would normally be in an artist’s palette. The eye’s texture reminds me of a (Florida) gator’s eye–sans the yellow, vertical slit in the middle.