Serendipity

On reading Carol Marine’s story Dudes having coffee on her blog Painting a day, about random photos turning out to be people she knows, I remembered this story about a dog and a painting.

I was at North Beach in Durban, South Africa. The orange umbrellas at a beach café caught my eye so I took a number of photos with my phone. These resulted in a number of drawings and a painting called Red Bandana. The painting was sold and I thought no more about the day at the beach.

Red bandanna - oil on canvas -500 mm x 500 mm Carol Lee Beckx ©2013

A couple of years later, I phoned a supplier to place an order for my shop. After placing the order we had a conversation that went something like this:

Supplier: “Are you Carol Beckx, the artist?

CB: “Yes, I am”

Supplier: “I have a painting of yours”

CB: “Oh, which painting do you have?”

Supplier: “I have Red Bandanna. I saw a photo of it on the gallery page in the Sunday paper. I recognized the dog so I went to the exhibition and bought the painting.

CB: “What a coincidence!”

Supplier: “Yes - the people sitting at the table with the dog are my friend and I with her dog. She was a bit upset with me when she found out I had bought the painting of us having lunch at the beach!”