Lisa Fittipaldi, 54, a talented self-taught artist, is blind. This poses a problem – not for her, but for the art world.
    
     Fittipaldi’s art work sells well in galleries until their proprietors discover that she is blind. One of her friends carried some of her paintings to six galleries. A gallery owner took some paintings, sold one, then learned that Fittipalid is blind and decided not to carry her paintings after all.

                                           Lisa Fittipaldi

     That attitude may be hard to believe, but even I found it to be true. I called a friend who owns a gallery and represents many established, well-known artists. I told her about Fittipaldi’s art work, and gave her Fittipaldi’s Web site and telephone number. Even though my friend told me that she is approached by over 200 artists a year, she agreed to call Fittipaldi – but she didn’t. Later Fittipaldi also tried to call that gallery, and her call was not returned.

                Still, despite much rejection, Fittipaldi has sold over 400 paintings in the past six years.

Not a Hobby

     In 1995, Fittipaldi’s husband, retired Navy Commander Al Fittipaldi, gave her a child’s watercolor set and encouraged her to paint. She does so, for hours at a time, drawing upon a lifetime of vivid memories. Trained to be precise and observant as a trauma-care registered nurse, and later as a certified public accountant, Fittipaldi applies that training to her art. “I put three primary colors on my palate, and remember what I’ve put where,” she says.

     Fittipaldi is not the typical military retiree’s spouse with a new hobby. Her bright, eye-catching colors and designs remind me of the work of Thomas Hart Benton, one of my personal favorites.

     Fittipaldi and her paintings have been featured in many newspapers and magazines, including Fine Arts Magazine and People Weekly.

                         Olé

     I first learned about Fittipaldi from one of her oil paintings, Olé, reproduced on the cover of the January/ February 2002 issue of the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy. The painting shows no indication that the artist is blind. Even her signature is strong and well-placed.

     Before her vision failed, Fittipaldi earned two bachelors degrees and two masters degrees, and made three major career changes. Although she still maintains her nursing license, she tired of nursing after working in trauma care. “Nursing is a very stressful occupation,” she says. “In 1980, I went back to school to become a certified public accountant and financial analyst.”

                                Meanwhile, her husband was serving 29 years in the navy.

Fourth Career

     When her vision suddenly failed in 1993 because of a vascular illness that may be genetic in origin, Fittipaldi started her third career – or is it her fourth? She and her husband also own and manage Beauregard House, a bed-and-breakfast inn with six guest rooms in the King William District of San Antonio, Texas, within walking distance of the city’s famed River Walk. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Beauregard House was built in 1908 as rental property by the Oppenheimers, a local family prominent in banking and insurance.

     The Fittipaldis together look after their bed-and-breakfast guests with the help of a staff member who cleans rooms and makes beds. The Fittipaldis do all the cooking. That means it’s very important that every item in the kitchen remains where they placed it. “When we take a few days off and hire a professional innkeeper to look after our guests, it takes me days to find everything again,” she says. “An item may be only a small distance from where I placed it, but if it’s moved, it’s lost to me. We ask substitute innkeepers not to change our computer system or move my cooking materials. If you use them, put them right back. They seldom understand my request. I bake a lot and in my kitchen and office I depend on routine and repetition of movement.

     “Using my computer system is important. Today I read and do accounting with my computer. I use Windows-Eyes, a screen-reader program from GW Micro, Inc., in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Jaws® for Windows, developed by Freedom Scientific Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, which employs an integrated voice synthesizer and the computer’s sound card to reproduce what appears on the computer screen. It also can create Braille copy. With these programs, I can read anything printed or on the Internet.”

Vascular Illness

     “Very little is known about my illness, which is hard to diagnose,” Fittipaldi says. “Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore are studying my condition.

     “Vascular illness is cased by plaque aggregations in the arteries and veins. When the veins fail, they cause infarcts or aneurisms. In my case, infarcts occurred in the optic nerves in my eyes and in my lungs. We’re still not sure if my mother and older brother had such problems. Both are now dead. My younger brother also is affected.

     “The problem is not unique to me. Many Americans over the age of 25 have similar problems, and scientist are just beginning to be aware of them.”

Arranging Her World.

     Fittipaldi is legally blind. “I have no functional vision,” she says. “I cannot see any print, any distance, dimension, color, shape, or form. I only have motion vision.”

     To paint, she uses a rectangular palate. “I start with a clean palate,” she explains, “with red in the middle and yellow and blue on either side, and make my own gradations of color. When you think of painting, you think first of color. What makes my paintings so attractive is not the color but the design. People follow visual cues. For me the cues are in my head. I know in my painting where I am spatially in my head. I paint seven days week, hundreds of hours a week. When I first started out, I had to learn how to establish landmarks in my paintings.

     “We sell my paintings off the inn’s walls. Sometimes I will say one of my paintings is on the dining room wall, when unknown to me the wall is empty because my husband sold the painting right off the wall and hasn’t had a chance to hang another.”

     Ten percent of every dollar Fittpaldi receives from her paintings goes to her foundation – the Mind’s Eye Foundation (http://www.mindseyefoundation.org). It provides educational software and special programming for the blind and visually impaired, and laptop computers for blind and visually impaired public-school students anywhere in the United States.

Rosalie E. Leposky is managing partner of Ampersand Communications, a news-features syndicate based in Miami, Florida.