Helen LINEBERGER

LINEBERGER, LINEBARGER, ENGSTROM

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 9/17/2006 at 15:48:48

St. Petersburg Times [FL]
June 29, 1991- Craig Basse, reporter

Helen Lineberger, 88, late-blooming local artist
Artist Helen Lineberger died Wednesday (June 26, 1991) at her home in Carlton Towers, 470 Third St. S. She was 88. Until moving to the downtown apartments in 1987, she lived for many years in the Driftwood home built by Mark Dixon Dodd, one of the pioneer full-time artists of St. Petersburg. Her son, William J. Lineberger of Treasure Island, president of Jet Oil Co. in Pinellas Park, once owned the home on Big Bayou in southeast St. Petersburg. A grandson, Ian Lineberger, owns it now. A late-blooming artist, Mrs. Lineberger fulfilled a lifetime ambition as a 70-year-old widow: She began to study painting. That was 18 years ago at a workshop organized by Thurman Hewitt of San Diego. Later, she took about 20 art trips, most of them out of the country. The Goldfield, Iowa, native painted on location in Tahiti, Mexico, India, Morocco, and elsewhere, seeking out interesting faces and arresting scenes. Most of her works were hung at her home or given to friends, her grandson said Friday. Mrs. Lineberger and her husband, Jack, came to Treasure Island in 1947 from Iowa after selling a number of service stations. They lived there for about three years before beginning extensive travels that took them to Florida's Southeast Coast, where they lived at Miami and Delray Beach. They moved back to the Suncoast in 1964 with Mrs. Lineberger firmly launched on her artistic career despite a lack of formal instruction. She picked up her brushes after bowing out of a family drive to Alaska, she recalled in a 1979 interview. ""I was alone in our cottage in Delray Beach, and I had no interruptions,'' she said. ""I drew at night and got up in the morning and painted until I didn't want to do it anymore. I kept this up for two months.''Before the summer was over she had sold a painting. Soon she had a one-woman art show in Delray Beach. After moving to St. Petersburg she exhibited first at the gallery at Interior Living Concepts in 1980 and later at the Arts Center. Survivors in addition to her son include a daughter, Julia Engstrom, Stuart; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1967. The family plans a memorial service later this summer.International Chapels Funeral Home, Pinellas Park, is in charge of arrangements. Some information in this obituary came from a story by Maggi Bevacqua in the St. Petersburg Times and from a story in the Evening Independent.