Art and Synchronicity
It’s incredibly hard to explain artistic synchronicity to someone who has never experienced it. The closest analogy I can give is this: imagine asking a person with a mathematical gift to multiply 1,457,645 × 2115 in their head. They instantly give you the correct answer, while you’re still punching the numbers into a calculator and watching the same result appear. To them it’s not magic—they simply “saw” the numbers. That’s exactly how it feels for some artists, especially highly metaphorical ones. Images, symbols, or entire compositions suddenly appear fully formed in the mind, perfectly suited to the piece we’re working on or the one we’re about to begin. It feels like magic to everyone else, but to us it’s just seeing what’s already there.
Yet there is a profound difference between the two gifts. The mathematician’s answer can be proven instantly—cold, hard, undeniable. The metaphorical artist’s vision cannot. It remains stubbornly subjective, impossible to verify in the moment. One gift is precise to the decimal point; the other lives in the realm of feeling, resonance, and personal truth. Every time I have taken up an artistic pursuit, whether I touch a canvas, or start refurbishing a sign these weird serendipitous events happen.
All my life I’ve been followed by these strange, meaningful coincidences. I’ve tried to read others thoughts on this subject, to see if they swim in the same current, but the phenomenon stays elusive—even among other artists. I’m often stunned by how differently they interpret the signs. Their readings never quite match the private electricity I feel. When it happens to me, it’s unmistakable: I might be painting an alligator, with enormous ears, and suddenly alligators with gigantic ears are everywhere—on billboards, in conversations, in dreams, on random T-shirts in the grocery store. The world starts shouting in symbols.
Over decades I’ve learned to trust that the meaning will arrive later. In the moment I usually have no idea why God is screaming at me. So I archive everything. I’ve filled notepads and written entire books chronologically, meticulously logging every eerie overlap, every jolt of recognition. Only years afterward, when I revisit those pages, does the pattern snap into focus. Suddenly I understand exactly why that symbol bombarded me at that precise point in my life. Every single time, without exception, it brings a flood of clarity to the adventure I was living through. Those archived coincidences become the quiet proof that I wasn’t imagining it—that something was guiding the brush long before I understood where it wanted to go.
Many times the synchronicity isn’t just internal—it happens alongside other people. I’ll be quietly wrestling with something deep (a broken heart, grief, or a frightening physical symptom), and suddenly I’ll cross paths with someone carrying the exact same weight at the exact same moment. If I’m aching over lost love, I’ll meet another person whose heart has just been shattered in nearly identical ways. If I’m privately terrified about a health issue, someone will mention—almost in passing—that they’re facing the very same worry, often on the same day the fear first gripped me.
Over the years I’ve come to recognize these encounters as sacred assignments. When they happen, I’ve learned to stop and pray for the other person. What amazes me every time is that the moment I lift them up, something shifts inside me too. The prayer I offer seems to circle back and land on my own wounds at the same time, healing them….and then the healing starts flowing both ways.
I don’t fully understand the mechanics of it, but it feels as though my Father in heaven occasionally aligns two souls on the same narrow, difficult track at the exact same time—so we can walk beside each other for a while, share the load, and guide one another toward daylight. We were destined, just for that stretch, to be mirrors and medicine for each other. Some of my greatest friends, even to this day, are those I walked a heavy path with at one moment of time.