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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by Lisa Fittipaldi
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following, submitted June 2004, is from the artist.
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. 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 appears 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 now lived in.
Since her entrance into the International world of art, she has sold over 500 paintings internationally, both in oil and watercolor. Since 1997, her 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 gave way to still life and landscape, and ultimately to complex figurative paintings of a teeming marketplace or a crowded jazz club.
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. Among her other endeavors, she and her husband run a successful bed and breakfast in San Antonio, Texas.
PERIODICALS
PEOPLE Magazine 15 October 2001
"In Her Mind's Eye" by Chris Coats
Pages 200-202
Southwest Art Magazine April 1999
"Best of Texas" by Kristin Bucher
Art Baby Art November 1999
"The Story of Lisa Fittipaldi" by Al James
Fine Art Magazine Spring 2001
"Creating Art with the Mind's Eye" by Al James
Pages 79-80
Hope Magazine Spring 2001 / No. 26
"Trusting the Mind's Eye" by Ivette M. Yee
Pages 44-47
YOU Magazine September 2001 / No. 725
"Art of Darkness" (excerpted)
Pages 136-137 Cape Town, South Africa
Daily Word October 2002
"A Journey of Discovery" by Colleen Zuck
Pages 6-11
STERN Magazine April 2001 / No. 19
"Gefuhlte Farben" by Stern staff
Page 220
Celebrate Austin Spring 2001
"An Artist Who Happens to be Blind" by Cynthia Maddox
Page 106
Austin Magazine Spring 2001
"It's All in Her Head" by Kay Powers
Pages 40-44
Good Life Magazine December 2002
"Blind Ambition" by Diana Erbo
Good Life Coaching December 2002 / No. 44
"Living the Creative Life" by Sharon Good
Angels on Earth Sept/Oct 2003
"My Mind's Eye"
Special Awards:
Appointed to the Texas State Independent Living Council by President Elect George W. Bush
Exhibitions:
Museum of Fine Art Austin July 1997
Florence Art Gallery "Wonders of the Mind's Eye" November 1998
Florence Art Gallery "Art Colors Life" March 1999
Dallas Museum of Art "Beaux Art" April 1999
Pink Palace Museum October 1999
Art Expo, New York March 2001
Witte Museum "Blind Ambition: The Art of Lisa Fittipaldi" June/July 2001
Sands Point Museum "Blind Ambition" June 2002
Sternberg Museum "Blind Ambition" July-December 2002
MEMBERSHIP
Artist Acquisition Group McNay Museum of Art
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