Painting the town with synchros

One day a professional artist came to Paint Nite, and painted the painters. That’s Megan teaching in the background.

Sometimes I don’t immediately recognize a synchronicity, but days, weeks, or even months later, I suddenly realize what an amazing synchro had occurred. And I also wonder how I could’ve missed it.

That was the case recently when I was talking with Trish about how well daughter Megan is doing this year in both her jobs, including her dog walking biz and her work as a Paint Nite artist/teacher. With dog walking, she has managed to expand her downtown venue and now works with a partner. With Paint Nite, she’s progressed from one class a week to three or four, and her boss who owns the Orlando, Florida franchise considers Megan her top artist. She’s now involved in selecting paintings and training new artists.

The synchro, or actually synchros, that I overlooked occurred the day she was interviewed and hired for Paint Nite.  That day everything came together for her, and that was after weeks of frustration getting turned down for part-time jobs she was well qualified for, but probably would’ve hated.

When her future boss, Carolyn, asked Megan about her experience as an artist, she mentioned her degree in fine arts from Florida’s top public liberal arts honors college, then added that she currently had a gallery show in Orlando. The show, she explained, was in a bar called BART, which stood for Bar & Art.

Probably mentioning an art gallery show in a bar wouldn’t be that impressive, except for the fact that the job she was applying for involved teaching art in bars! People learn to paint and they’re served drinks.

So that was a synchro, but there was more. The day of the interview her art show was feature on a local TV news show. So she told Carolyn that if she couldn’t stop by BART to see the show, she could see her interviewed that evening on the news.

No wonder she got the job. The stars were surely aligned that day and the synchros were flowing. She was definitely on the fast-track of the synchronicity highway.

While at the time I recognized the synchro with the TV interview, I’d overlooked the oddity that both her gallery show and her potential new job as an art teacher took place in bars. But in downtown Orlando, it all makes sense. There are lots of bars and lots of bar-hopping young people living downtown. And it seems quite a few of them are looking for an artistic outlet as well as a couple of drinks.

As I was writing this, Megan called and told us that she’d just taught a class at a new bar downtown with 50 patrons painting, about double the size of her usual classes. And when you teach painting in a bar, you also get tips that some evenings doubles her income.

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