Viewers are captivated by Lisa Fittipaldi’s lively, colorful canvases.

When they learn that she is blind,

they are astounded. Fittipaldi was declared legally blind in 1993, and in the ensuing years her vision
dropped below measurable levels. She cannot see color or distance, dimension or print. A blind
painter? Until they see her work for themselves, people think it’s impossible. Clearly Lisa Fittipaldi is
doing something quite extraordinary, seemingly beyond the normal range of human capability. It
appears that she is the world’s only profoundly blind realist painter. Since 1997, her complex scenes
of diverse cultures and everyday life have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.

Why, of all things, did she choose to

paint? Vision is our main source of
sensory information. Without constant
visual input, the brain begins to “forget”
the world, losing track of whatever it
cannot hear, touch, or feel. It is only
through constant visual reinforcement
that reality does not fade away. In
addition, this constant stimulation is as
necessary to the survival of the brain as
water is to the body. When you are
blind, you must find alternative sources
of nourishment for the brain because the
mind no longer receives imagery from
the eye.

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 dark world she now 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.

How does she do it? Clearly for Lisa Fittipaldi the loss of her sight was a challenge to her formidable
intellect, one that she knew she must meet in order to keep her spirit and vitality alive. With no prior
art background, she had to start from scratch. A former CPA with a photographic memory, Fittipaldi
recognized that she would have to build her knowledge of line and shape, contour and color, step by
step, and meticulously store it in her internal filing cabinet. Unable to learn as others do, through
viewing paintings and watching demonstrations of technique, she had to develop her own language,
and her own perceptual system. Thus began an odyssey to learn her new craft. She listened to
hundreds of books on tape and traveled with her husband to museums around the world that she’d
never taken the time to visit when she could see. She tackled each new aspect of art with fervor, each
time mastering a new theory and adapting it to her use, rigorously practicing each new technique.
Eventually she could envision her compositions so well that she no longer needed the grids of string or
rows of staples that oriented her to the canvas. 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. Moving from watercolor to oil painting meant learning
yet another system of color theory and application.
Fittipaldi delights in giving her viewer the
visual experience of color and energy that
she sees in her mind’s eye. It is her way of
validating the reality of her inner vision. She
entertains 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 is
culled from memories of her own past
experience and travels. She paints vignettes
of life from the ambience of the new locales
she visits.

In addition to painting, Fittipaldi gives speeches and demonstrations, and 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 runs a
bed and breakfast in San Antonio, Texas. To quote The Austin American Statesman: "Lisa Fittipaldi
lost her vision but not her determination to express herself artistically. How she paints, however, may
remain a mystery. It's the question everybody asks and one that confounds even her."

Lisa Fittipaldi was highly honored to have received a gubernatorial appointment, from former Governor
/ President George W. Bush, to the Texas State Independent Living Council.

To learn more about Lisa Fittipaldi, her art and her foundation we invite you to explore her web site.
Lisa Fittipaldi is available for commissioned artwork, speaking engagements and demonstrations.
Please inquire at [email protected]

Copyright 2007 by Blind Ambition Studios.

All rights Reserved. Last update 18 March, 2007.

IT IS an odd sight. A middle-aged man, fully reclined, drawing pictures of hammers and mugs
and animal figurines on a special clipboard, which is balanced precariously on a pillow atop his
ample stomach.

A half-dozen people buzz around him. One adjusts a towel under his neck to make him more
comfortable, another wields a stopwatch and chants instructions to start doing this or stop doing
that, and yet another translates everything into Turkish. A small group convenes in a corner to
assess the proceedings. A few of us just stand around watching, and trying not to get in the way.
The elaborate ritual is a practice run for an upcoming brain scan and the researchers want to get
everything just right. Meanwhile, the man at the centre of all this attention, a blind painter, cracks
jokes that keep everyone tittering.

The painter is Esref Armagan. And he is here in Boston to see if a peek inside his brain can
explain how a man who has never seen can paint pictures that the sighted easily recognise - and
 even admire. He paints houses and mountains and lakes and faces and butterflies, but he's
never seen any of these things. He depicts colour, shadow and perspective, but it is not clear
how he could have witnessed these things either. How does he do it?

Because if Armagan can represent images in the same way a sighted person can, it raises big
questions not only about how our brains construct mental images, but also about the role those
images play in seeing. Do we build up mental images using just our eyes or do other senses
contribute too? How much can congenitally blind people really understand about space and the
layout of objects within it? How much "seeing" does a blind person actually do?

Armagan was born 51 years ago in one of Istanbul's poorer neighbourhoods. One of his eyes
failed to develop beyond a rudimentary bud, the other is stunted and scarred. It is impossible to
know if he had some vision as an infant, but he certainly never saw normally and his brain
detects no light now. Few of the children in his neighbourhood were formally educated, and like
them, he spent his early years playing in the streets. But Armagan's blindness isolated him, and
to pass the time, he turned to drawing. At first he just scratched in the dirt. But by age 6 he was
using pencil and paper. At 18 he started painting with his fingers, first on paper, then on canvas
with oils. At age 42 he discovered fast-drying acrylics.

He paints houses and mountains and lakes and faces and butterflies, but he's never seen any of these
things
His paintings are disarmingly realistic. And his skills are formidable. "I have tested blind people
for decades," says John Kennedy, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, "and I have never
seen a performance like his." Kennedy's first opportunity to meet and test Armagan in person
was during a visit to New York last May, for a forum organised by a group called Art Education for
the Blind. Armagan, who is something of a celebrity in Turkey, has become used to touring with
his canvases to the Czech Republic, China, Italy and the Netherlands. What made this visit
different was the interest shown by scientists - both Kennedy and a team from Boston.

Kennedy put Armagan through a battery of tests. For instance, he presented him with solid
objects that he could feel - a cube, a cone and a ball all in a row (dubbed the "three mountains
task") - and asked him to draw them. He then asked him to draw them as though he was perched
elsewhere at the table, across from himself, then to his right and left and hovering overhead.
Kennedy asked him to draw two rows of glasses, stretching off into the distance. Representing
this kind of perspective is tough even for a sighted person. And when he asked him to draw a
cube, and then to rotate it to the left, and then further to the left, Armagan drew a scene with all
three cubes. Astonishingly, he drew it in three-point perspective - showing a perfect grasp of how
horizontal and vertical lines converge at imaginary points in the distance. "My breath was taken
away," Kennedy says.

Kennedy has spent much of his career exploring art from the perspective of blind people. He has
shown that people who are congenitally blind understand outline drawings when they feel them
just as seeing people do. They understand and can draw in three dimensions. In fact, blind
 children develop the ability to draw, he has found, much as sighted
children do - but all too few blind children ever get the opportunity to
explore this ability. Even knowledge about perspective, he has come to
believe, is acquired in similar ways for both. "Where a sighted person
looks out, a blind person reaches out, and they will discover the same
things," says Kennedy. "The geometry of direction is common to vision
and touch."

Biography
Esref Armagan was born both unsighted and to an impoverished family. As a child and
young adult he never received any formal schooling or training; however, he has taught
himself to write and print. He draws and paints by using his hands and primarily oil
paints. In this manner, Mr. Armagan has been perfecting his art for the past thirty-five
years.

He needs absolute quite when working. First, using a Braille stylus, he etches an outline
of his drawing. He needs to feel that he is "inside" his painting-- in fact, when he is
drawing a picture of the sea, he often wonders if he should wear a life jacket so as not
drown! When he is satisfied with his drawing, he starts to apply the oils with his fingers.
Because he applies only one color at a time (the colors would smear otherwise), he must
wait two or three days for the color to dry before applying the next color. This method of
painting is entirely unique to Mr. Armagan. He receives no assistance or training from
any individual. He also learned to draw perspective.

He has also developed his own methods of doing portraits. He asks a sighted person to
draw around a photograph, then he turns the paper over and feeling it with his left hand,
he transfer what he feels onto another sheet of paper, later adding color. He has done
portraits of the former first lady of Turkey, the current president and current prime
minister.

Mr. Armagan is currently forty-one years old, married with two children. He has
displayed his work at more than 20 exhibition in Turkey and in Holland and the Czech
Republic. He has appeared several times on television and in the press in Turkey and has
been on programs of the BBC and ZDF.