'Idon't care what you
do--just do something!'" he recalls. Stung by what she fealt was Al's
insensitivity, Fittipaldi, who had never even drawn before, presented him hours later with
a picture of four colored glass jars, images she drew on from memory. "I did
it," she says, "just to shut him up."
But the piece, recalls Al, "was really good." So
good, he encouraged Lisa to join a friend who had signed up for a two-week art-instruction
class at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, La. There, Fittipaldi, now 53, learned
basic painting techniques as well as strategies for memorizing her palettes and creating
out- lines. She has been painting ever since, and in 1998, Al sent out press packets
with samples of her work to art galleries, catching the attention of Dallas's Florence Art
Gallery. At her first show, held there in 1998, she sold all 14 of her works,
netting more than $20,000. Her paintings, primarily watercolors and oils, now hang
in more than 30 galleries nationwide.
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"When
customers learn she's blind, the reaction is, 'Oh, my God. I can't believe
it,'" says Michael O'Mahoney, owner of the Miami - based Wentworth Gallery, which has
sold 40 of Fittipaldi's paintings at prices up to $10,000. But, he adds, "her
work stands on it's own."
To compensate for things she cannot see, Fittipaldi relies
on her other senses. By listening to what's going on around her, for example, she
can imagine street scenes and portraits. As for depicting facial expressions, she
says, "I just know, based on the mental picture I have, whether the details are
coming out right." Says Douglas Walton, her former art instructor:
"She captures the true inner spirit more than most sighted artists. She paints
from the heart."
The oldest of three children born in Pontiac, Mich., to
Irving, a camera-store operator, and Shirley, a homemaker (both now diceased), Fittipaldi
graduated from the University of Michigan in 1970 with a major in English. She then
attended |
Fittipaldi abandoned
nursing and became an accountant. A financial analyst at an Austin hospital, she was
driving on a freeway in March 1993 when suddenly but briefly everything wentdark.
"I thought I had just zoned out," she recalls. She brushed off the
incident---until two weeks later, when it happened again.
Within six months she was declared legally blind, although
it wasn't until 1998 that she was finally diagnosed with vasculitis, a genetic disorder
that inflames blood vessels, blocking circulation to tissues and organs. This year
the disease began attacking her hearing.
"We just don't have a cure for her problem,"
says Dr. Michael Nacol, Fittipaldi's internist. Although chemotherapy and steroids
are keeping the vasculitis in check, Nacol says, "her prognosis is poor,"
because eventually the disease is likely to attack a major organ, such as her heart.
Determined not to dwell on her fading health, Fittipaldi
takes yoga classes three times a week to keep up her strength. She also cooks,
baking |
