About

Lidia Larissa Ostapiuk Earl was born in Ternopil Ukraine. In 1943, during WWII she and her family fled their home because of the warning that the Nazis were coming through Ukraine on their way to Russia. They traveled as refugees in countries under Allied rule in Slovakia and West Germany. Their hopes of returning to Ukraine ended when the Yalta Treaty was signed by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in 1945. The treaty placed the part of Ukraine where they had lived under Stalin's Communist rule and they could no longer return. The last DP camp they lived in was in Germany at Berchtesgaden, near Hitler's Eagle's Nest Retreat. Her family was eventually sponsored to Miami, Florida where she attended the University of Miami and evolved as an artist.

Her drawing and painting from early grade school reaped a rich harvest when in 1960 she was awarded a four year art scholarship to the University of Miami earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. In her second year, she seriously studied and developed a passion for Iconography to the dismay of her modernist art professors to perpetuate and proliferate contemporary forms. She did receive encouragement from one art history teacher who understood and valued Iconography, and guided her in learning the technique of egg tempera painting.  Her first exhibit of Icons was at the age of 19 in Coconut Grove, Florida.

She migrated west to Houston, Texas where she became a liturgical art director at St. Jerome church and spent years teaching in special education. She flourished as an Iconographer, teaching and creating art, and now resides in the heart of Texas in Mercury, between Brady and Brownwood, 70 miles NW of Austin where she continues to paint and owns a general store.