“The universe was definitely looking out for me that day, and I have the kindness of (mostly) strangers to thank.”
When a Cape Town artist drove off without her painting, heartwarming acts (and quite the wild goose chase) reunited the two.
Cape Town, South Africa (30 April 2025) — When a Cape Town artist parked her car in Woodstock recently, she had no idea that this critical moment would lead her to kindness in different forms and faces. And a wild goose chase for a painting.
Sera Holland had finished her meeting in Woodstock when she decided to run a few errands. Unbeknownst to her, at the time she zoomed off to the City, one of her painting passengers was missing—something she only realised nearly an hour later and a rather long way away from the suburb where the painting had last been seen.
“I had accidentally driven off whilst my huge almost-a-metre-high painting had been sitting leaning against my car,” Sera tells Good Things Guy, the panic in her words palpable.
As anyone who had just realised they forgot something very important would do, Sara immediately sped off back to Woodstock Main Road.
No painting was present, only the beginning of the goose chase.
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Desperate to find her work, Sera went to the nearby shops to see if anyone had seen the painting. The good news about a large oil painting is that it’s pretty easy to spot.
“Everyone was especially kind and helpful,” Says Sera. “The CBD shop said they would check their cameras for me, and inside the fabric shop, there was a guy who was working in the back, who thought he saw someone he recognised pick up the painting.”
The fabric store’s unsung hero raced off to find the possible painting snatcher to no avail. Still, he kindly asked for Sera’s number in case he found it later.
A ‘deflated’ Sera went back to a local garage for a meal and a slice of serendipity. There, she ran into an artist friend who would go on to help her with the investigation—leading to yet another Good Samaritan, a car guard.
Though Sera didn’t know her friend and the car guard were putting the pieces together, she later found out that the car guard offered to help and contacted his boss for camera footage.
This camera footage led to the artists tracking down the painting’s picker—a lead at last!
Things, however, were not as simple as finding the mystery woman.
“Once we received the footage [the car guard] was able to track down the woman who had picked up the painting, but it turns out it had already been sold to a hairdresser, one who didn’t have a fixed address,” Sera explains.
The sleuths found the hairdresser, but the hairdresser had sold the painting to a customer. Surely, it ends there, right? Wrong. The customer sold it to someone else!
The next day, the final ‘customer’ had seemingly been found when the kind car guard sent Sera a video showcasing that he had found the painting at last.
All the while, the fabric store Good Samaritan had been threatening people with the police if the painting was not returned (a stretch, but a helpful one), committed to the cause as ever.
Sera got her painting back at long last, thanks to the people who had little reason to join her search, but she did so anyway. Not only that but the painting was recovered and undamaged (a marvel for thick oil paint that could’ve easily been squashed).
“The universe was definitely looking out for me that day, and I have the kindness of (mostly) strangers to thank,” Sera shares.
“Most people paint about living, but this painting has actually lived. I only wish I had placed a mini camera inside the painting so I could see its incredible journey.”
You can find Sera’s work here.
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