Viewers were captivated by Lisa Fittipaldi’s lively, colorful canvases.  When they learn that she was blind, they were astounded.  Fittipaldi was declared legally blind in 1993, and in the ensuing years her vision dropped below measurable levels.  She could not see color or distance, dimension or print.  A blind painter?  Until they saw her work for themselves, people thought it was impossible.  She was a realist painter.  Photographed, interviewed and filmed while painting, the majority of her 400 paintings sold.  Her complex scenes of diverse cultures and everyday life have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.  Clearly what is more remarkable is that Lisa Fittipaldi leads a full life while undergoing Chemotherapy and the daily struggles surrounding "Churg Strauss Vasculitis, Temporal Arteritis and Wagner's Disease."

Lisa began painting in 1995, two years after she lost her vision.  Painting was one of several avenues that Lisa explored as a way of finding her place in the world after losing her  sight.  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  world she lived in.  After she understood spatial relationships and the principles of art, she could make her own way in the world as both an artist, and a human being.

Fittipaldi delighted in giving her viewer the visual experience of color and energy that she saw in her mind’s eye.  It was her way of validating the reality of her inner vision.  She entertained herself by trying new textures, by mixing media, by setting out new artistic and technical problems to solve.  Her wide-ranging choice of subjects and locales was culled from memories of her own past experience and travels.  She painted vignettes of life from the ambience of  the new locales she visited, and visual images given to her by others.

In 2005 Lisa Fittipaldi elected to move to South America in order to undergo a series of surgeries to partially restore her vision.  After making this decision she donated all of her art supplies and the contents of her studio as a first attempt to regain her privacy.  The surgeries were moderately successful, however, there is no known way to stop the progression of the disease.  After several years in South America and The Republic of Panama, she temporarily returned to the United States to pursue a new career as an author.

In addition to painting, Fittipaldi is a world renowned author who's books have been published in German, Spanish and Turkish as well as English.  She runs the Mind’s Eye Foundation, a non-profit organization that she founded in 1999 to provide adaptive computer technology to blind, vision-impaired and hearing-impaired children.  With her husband Al, she is presently a resident of The Republic of Panama.