This is the amazing real life story of a blind American woman Lisa Fittipaldi. Her story is really astonishing because she had earlier been a person who had normal eyesight. Furthermore, she had been far away from the world of art and paintings. Although her ambition in life was to become a doctor, she became a nursing assistant and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
She was happy in her 3 decades of married life with her husband who was in the US Navy. In March 1993, at the age of 47 years, life suddenly dealt her a cruel blow. While she was driving to work for her financial analyst's job in a hospital in Austin, Texas, the tractor trolley in front of her car was suddenly enveloped in complete blackness. Although, a moment later she could again see, a little while later the blackness again enveloped her eyes and she even had a minor traffic accident, but fortunately was not injured.
After a slew of tests, she came to realize she was going blind. For two years, she was in a deep depression, having lost her job. Her whole world was turned upside down. She just lay for hours together on her bed and her depression was making her husband worried and even angry. One day he threw down a set of water colors on the bed beside her and told her to do something that could occupy her time and divert her mind from the depression she was in.
That incident became the turning point in her life and she started painting on her own. She wanted to learn painting by joining classes, but the teachers, failed to teach her the visual elements of painting, because in their opinion her blindness was the obstruction.
Even this setback did not daunt Lisa and she started painting based on her photographic memory of sights she had seen in her life when her eyesight had been normal and her talent for structure. Not only she started painting, but people could clearly see the talent in her. They were astounded as to how a person who could not see at all could paint so well.
She began painting from 1995 and today she is an internationally acclaimed painter who has sold more than 500 paintings of a quality that you cannot even imagine considering Lisa is completely blind. Some of her famous paintings include Van Gogh's Chair, Ohara's Tavern, The Red Garter, Window Dressing, and Universal Faith.
She has in an interview mentioned that the loss of eyesight, greatly improved the things she could see with her mind's eye and her photographic memory helps her paint very well without any problems. Lisa Fittipaldi now stays (and paints) in San Antonio, Texas with her husband. She has also written her story titled A Brush With Darkness - Learning To Paint After Losing My Sight.
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