The Miami Herald
SATURDAY , MAY 20, 2000
LIVING & ARTS
| ARTIST:
Lisa Fittipaldi, whose artwork is at the Bal Harbour Gallery in Miami Beach through Monday, has never seen her own paintings. The one seen here is named 'Impulse.' When Lisa Fittipaldi |
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insightful ARTIST BY IVETTE M. YEE iyee@herald.com Lisa Fittipaldi has created more than 400 watercolor paintings, rendering images of everything from the poor of South America to rodeo scenes to the streets of Venice. And she has sold all but 20 of them, mostly through word of mouth, making enough money to purchase a cozy bed-and-breakfast in San Antonio. So is her work really that good? "Don't ask me," the artist says. "I wouldn't know." That's because Fittipaldi is blind and has never seen her own paintings. |
Seven years ago, Fittipaldi lost her sight to a rare disease called optic neuritis, which causes inflamation of the blood vessels in the optic nerve, robbing her of 80 persent of her eyesight and leaving her legally blind. "If she sees anything," says her husband, Albert, "it is of totally no significance." Dealing with her blindness brought bouts of depression, frustration and a constant struggle to retain some independence. But in the depths of her despair, the artist discovered she had a talent bigger than the abyss. Fittipaldi first felt her sight slipping away when she couldn't see the cars next to her at an intersection; one time she almost hit a truck. When surgery to save her vision failed, she tried to convince herself nothing had changed. "I didn't believe them," she says of her doctors. "I got back in a car many times...and by the grace of whatever angels were on my shoulder, I didn't hit anybody." |
At the time, Fittipaldi was a successful financial analyst at a hospital in Austin, Texas. But when she went blind, she said the hospital would not accomodate her, and they offered a buy out in 1995. "I probably had no ego left by then. I mean there's only so much fighting you can do," Fittipaldi says. "I thought maybe I'm not worthy to have a job." So she took the buyout, went home and cried. "I had no reason to get out of bed," she says. Her husband of 26 years, Albert, a former military man and art collector who now designs Web sites, remembers those days vividly. "It was a tough time for both of us," says Albert, who also helps run the couple's bed-and-breakfast. "When she first lost her sight, she had to have everything done for her. She would say, 'put this glass in the sink for me' or 'Hang this towel up.'" PLEASE SEE ARTIST, 2E |
2E ARTIST,FROM 1E
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2000
Blind artist looks to mind's eye to
create watercolor paintings
| He quickly tired of
that routine, however, and prompted his wife "to get her act together and do
something." The petite, slender woman slowly learned how to get from the bedroom to the bathroom alone and how to dress herself. She began enrolling in every class she could find, including bridge, golf and sculpture. When they were cancelled, a friend encouraged her to enroll in an art class with her. Though the friend never showed up, Fittipaldi did, taking with her a child's watercolor paint set Albert had given her. "I wanted to do watercolor because I thought it was the easiest way to paint," says Fittipaldi, who cannot see color, distance or dimension and compaires her vision to snow on a TV screen. "I didn't know then that it was the hardest." She had Albert find every book he could about art and read them to her. "It became more of a defiant thing," Fittipaldi remembers. "People kept saying, 'You can't paint; you'r blind.' And I said, 'Well why not; let's just see about that.'" That wasn't the only slight Fittipaldi recalls. When she went to the symphony, for example, people would ask her what she was doing there. Similar run-ins followed elsewhere. "When people would see me out with my cane at the movies, or at the theater or doing something normal, they would either react in a very positive way or they got a little scared themselves," she says. "I guess they were thinking that this might happen to them." But the hardest part of going blind was letting go of the everyday activities she once took for granted, like grocery shopping or driving down the street. "To this day, it makes me very frustrated and sometimes very angry," she says. "People don't mean to censor you, but they do." Fittipaldi's frustrations led her to establish the Mind's Eye Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides educational technology to visually and hearing impaired children, last August. Proceeds from her paintings underwrite the operational costs at the foundation, which has 4,000 volunteers. "When I could see, I didn't care at all about people. I was not in tune to them. I didn't pay any attention to them and I definitely didn't listen to them," Fittipaldi says. "Now I try to listen to them. I focus on their voices and try to figure out what they're doing, not only as an artist, but as another person." |
 AL DIAZ / HERALD STAFF UNIQUE: Lisa Fittipaldi has painted more than 400 watercolors, including 'Tropical Tiger,' a detail of which is above. She tells apart colors by the texture of the paint between her fingertips. In addition to her work with the foundation, Fittipaldi finds comfort in her art. At the Bal Harbour Gallery, where her paintings will be on display through Monday, Fittipaldi's work hangs across from masters like Picasso and Dali. Some patrons say the positioning is deserved. "Watercolor is very unforgiving, because you have to layer it with pigments," ssaid Gloria Johnson, a director at the Bal Harbour Gallery. "One mistake, and boom you're finished. It is a very hard medium. How she does it is amazing." Fittipaldi says she paints by mental mapping; she sees the images in her head over and over again and simply paints what she sees. "It's the same way you drive down the street and know that the gas station is there," she says. Anyone who watched her paint wouldn't know she was blind - though her trademark dark glasses would soon give her away. Lacking sight, the artist relies on her remaining senses, including touch. She can easily tell apart colors by the texture of the paint between her fingertips and can identify the paint's manufacturer by the feel of the bottle. An extensive traveler, she and her husband have visited places such as the Balkans to Southeast Asia, making her paintings something of a travel log composed of a little bit of memory, a little bit of eavesdropping. And since the images come from her mind's eye, she doesn't have to "feel faces." "Most of my paintings are based on what I think I'm seeing, a story," Fittipaldi says. "Like when we went to Cairo last year. [The painting] Decisions is about two gentlemen from a camel market. They were trying to debate whether or not to keep a camel now or pay to have it shipped for a better price." In the painting, Fittipaldi catches the quizzical look on the men's faces. |
IF YOU GO
Lisa Fittipaldi's paintings are on exhibit through Monday, at the Bal Harbour Gallery, 9700 Collins Ave., upper level. Data: 305-864-5800 or www.lisafittipaldi.com online. For info about Mind's Eye Foundation: 210-222-1198 In Snow Birds, she depicts old-timers sitting on boardwalk benches in Fort Lauderdale, where Fittipaldi had done an art show. "I would walk my dog on the beach every morning and I would hear the same voices," she says. "Those voices never seemed to move, so I painted these [older] men and women talking." Snow Birds is a show favorite, and Fittipaldi says people who have seen it say they recognize the old-timers. But Fittipaldi's biggest fan is her husband. "I've never seen anything like her," he says. "I think everything she does is unique and different. She can't reproduce it, so you're only getting one painting; that's what's fantastic about it." Plus, he says art has brought her conviction and courage. "A lot of artists paint stuff over and over," he says. "They find something that sells and they keep reproducing it. Lisa paints for Lisa and I admire her for that." He has seen other changes as well. "She's gotten nicer," he says. "When she was on the rungs of the corporate ladder, she wasn't a sweet person. She was always clawing her way to the top. Now she's a people person." |