Serendipity, Synchronicity and Chance Encounters

Battersea Arts Centre, London, UK. Where it all began…

Photo credit: https://archello.com/project/battersea-arts-centre

People talk about serendipity. Synchronicity. Chance encounters that can change everything.

Well, I had mine. It was in London, while I was living in Battersea, South West London, and working for American Express. I knew I enjoyed painting, and wanted to spend more of my time painting. I kept finding myself saying I wanted to be creative and expand my life outside of my work life.

But I couldn’t find an art school that made logistical sense. South West London is not an easy commute to North East London, which was where all the art schools I could find online seemed to be. And I didn’t even really know what kind of art school I was looking for! I just knew I wanted to paint. So I muddled around on the internet for a few months but didn’t make any progress.

Then one cold, grey Saturday morning in January, just after New Years when resolutions are fresh, I found an online special at the local Battersea Arts Centre for five Yogalates exercise classes. What is Yogalates you may ask (as I asked myself)? A mix of Yoga and Pilates. I love yoga. I love Pilates. I have now discovered I don’t love them together.

But that definitely not the biggest discovery I made that Saturday morning.

My serendipitous moment came at the end of the class, when a couple from the class literally bumped into me as we were pulling our coats off the rack. We began talking, and when I asked them what they did, it turned out they were both artists! She was studying at a school just down the road (down the road!) and he was renting studio space in the same building to create his art. I couldn’t believe it. I had been searching for a school for ages, and now they were both spending each day in an artistic space a few hundred metres from my front door (I just googled it – a 6-minute walk!).

And then they invited me to come with them to the studios! We walked a few minutes down the road, and they showed me the space. A warehouse converted into many little artist studios with an art school on the top floor. Divine! Right on my doorstep! We sat in the guy’s studio for four hours drinking cup upon cup of not-quite-hot tea using recycled tea bags and talking about art, life, and who knows what else. All I know is, it was glorious. I felt connected, excited, authentic.

I wanted to be friends with these two people forever! But strangely, after that chance encounter, that moment of synchronicity or serendipity, I never heard from them again! At times I wondered whether they really did exist, but they did – it was through the woman that I emailed the Lavender Hill Studios (the name of the art school she was attending) and secured a place in their Monday evening drawing and painting class. And it was through this class that I, unbeknownst to me at the time, began building a portfolio of artworks I would use for my application to The Florence Academy of Art three years later when I was living in Singapore and looking for a “way out” of my corporate experience.

There was another element at work here. The way I first discovered one could go to Italy and study art was through a close friend’s older sister. She studied painting in Florence in 2003. Ever since then I’d had this idea firmly planted in the back of my mind… one could go to Italy to study art. Even though I didn't know it at the time, the London art school’s method was strongly rooted in the Florence figurative tradition, as the directors of the school had studied and worked in Florence for many years before opening their own school in London. So I was actually beginning a Florentine artistic training in London, and the work I created gave me the portfolio I needed to apply to The Florence Academy of Art.

Imagine if I’d known all of this would play out, after a serendipitous, synchronous moment bumping into two strangers in a yogalates exercise class in Battersea. It might have been hard to believe. Or maybe it would have made perfect sense.

“Serendipity: good luck in finding valuable things unintentionally”

“Synchronicity: when things happen together, as if perfectly timed, coined in the 1950s by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, to describe uncanny coincidences that seem to be meaningful. The Greek roots are syn-, “together,” and khronos, “time.””