About Lisa fittipaldi

Her History & Her Work

Born  in Pontiac, Michigan in 1948, Lisa Fittipaldi attended the University  of Michigan receiving a Bachelors of Art degree in education in 1970.  She then attended nursing school at the University of South Carolina  where she met her husband Al in 1972. They were married in New York in  1974. She worked at the Baltimore Burn Center as a trauma care burn  specialist with a Masters degree from the University of Maryland in  1976. Fittipaldi again returned to school, receiving her Masters degree  in accountancy from the University of Houston in 1982. She changed  careers to move into the field of high finance by pursuing a career as a  CPA and financial analyst that year.  

 Lisa  Fittipaldi was a trauma-care nurse and a Certified Public Accountant  before she lost her sight in 1993 to a devastating Autoimmune disease.  Memories of having traveled the world with her husband Al, a career  Naval Officer, has allowed her to depict daily life in astonishingly  rich color and depth. Prior to her vision loss she had no art  background. The challenge of a child's watercolor set, thrown down like a  gauntlet by her frustrated husband, opened the door to a new life in  the field of art. A self-taught artist, Fittipaldi began selling her  works in 1995, first at local shows, then at art fairs around the  country and today on her website and throughout the world. She has  appeared on dozens of local and national television programs, grants  radio and print interviews, and gives speeches and demonstrations to  audiences worldwide. Painting was one of several avenues that Fittipaldi  explored as a way of finding her place in the world after becoming  blind. She quickly understood that painting her storehouse of memories  was both a source of nourishment and a way to keep her world alive in  her mind. As she began to paint, she also realized that the principles  of art gave her a system for comprehending and navigating the  three-dimensional world she could no longer see. Whatever she learned in  her painting studio, working on a two-dimensional canvas, could be  applied to her understanding of the vast dark world she had lived in. 

Autoimmune  Diseases may appear to be quite different, but they share fundamental  characteristics.  Each has no known cause, no cure and is a lifelong  journey in management.  When Lisa went blind in 1993, she discovered  that bravery and honesty were the keys to emotional management.   Skeptics couldn't understand how she could function as a blind person  in a sighted world.  She was more concerned with just functioning and  surviving.  Expressing herself thru writing, creating beautiful works of  art and exploring sculpture.  In learning inner peace and true inner  happiness, without mood elevators or external interventions.  Feeling  that chemotherapies, immune replacement infusions and injectable  biologics were enough for her body to handle.  Each episode of symptoms  bring another layer of diagnosis confirmed by extensive testing.  First  came Cogan's syndrome which affected the eyes and inner ears and severe  inflammation of the blood vessels.  This very rare autoimmune disease  was followed by two others.  Mixed Connective Tissue Disease and Genetic  Primary Immune Deficiency.  Lisa is now registered with The  International Organization of Rare Diseases.  Through this time  extensive process, Lisa has learned to travel extensively, to become  addicted to exercise and to once again unleash there creative nature.
 

Since her entrance into the International world of art, she has sold  over 15,000 paintings internationally, in oil, acrylic  and watercolor.  Since 1997, her famous paintings composing  complex scenes of diverse  cultures and everyday life have been exhibited in museums and galleries  around the world. A deep understanding of color theory supplanted her  need to "feel" the consistency of the paint to know what color she was  using. Colorful abstract paintings have given way to still life and  landscape, and ultimately too complex figurative paintings of a teeming  marketplace or a crowded jazz club.  Lisa's story can be found in  numerous publications, in multiple languages.  These books and  publications have been printed in Russian, Hungarian, Spanish, Polish,  Japanese, Chinese and many other languages.  (ibid.  Wentworth Art Gallery)
 

Realizing a deficit in our educational system, she founded the Mind's  Eye Foundation in 1999 to provide specially equipped computers and  software to vision and hearing impaired schoolchildren so they can  remain mainstreamed in our schools.  Lisa is presently providing  Watercolor and Oil classes to people interested in pursuing a new hobby  or career in the field of art.

Since  2019 her disease has gotten progressively worse, however modern  medicine has been able to return much of her vision, and provide her  with an acceptable lifestyle.  She and Al now enjoy traveling the world  extensively and she has dedicated most of her life to the world of art.   Among her other recent endeavors, she has delved into the world of  sculpture, teaching and writing.  Since 2019, Lisa and Al have published  several books that can be found in print as well as Amazon.com eBooks  under Lisa Fittipaldi.