Welcome,
Everybody.
If you haven't been to this space before,
I'm Before the Brush,
But I'm Patricia Baldwin Segerbrook.
And I created this space called Before the Brush because I wanted to drive home the importance of self-awareness,
Soulful understanding of self,
And all the work that is done before you pick up the paintbrush.
Now I'm an artist by career path,
By choice,
And it's given me an amazing life for the last couple decades.
Of course,
As with,
I think,
Every,
If not 99.
9% of artists,
That's multifaceted.
So not only do I spend my time in the studio painting,
But I teach and I travel and I've been lucky enough to write books and the facilities I live in and have my studio here through,
I own and then lease studio space to other people.
So as I said,
Multifaceted.
That's who I am.
I'm in Lexington,
Kentucky,
And I've just started coming back to this space,
Before the Brush,
And doing these lives and getting more meditations up because the importance of this purpose I've set for myself has become all that more important,
I suppose,
Or soulfully,
Willfully important,
I guess,
To myself.
So I'm trying to show up here more,
Even though I'm a little reticent to preaching,
If you will,
To others,
Because my core principle is we all know it all.
We all have everything within us that is what we need to live this best life.
And not only for ourself to live this best life,
But to integrate with every other life that is being lived.
Therefore,
Showing up here and saying,
Do this,
Or behave like this,
Or try this,
Is a little disingenuous because I also want to say,
Just listen to your soul,
You're fine.
It's a little combo of both,
Maybe,
That yin and yang.
Today though,
I come with the intention of talking about purpose versus purposeful.
This is something I've struggled with my whole life,
And I'm not sure why.
Maybe I never will,
And maybe there's no real answer to why I would struggle with finding my purpose.
It was crunchy,
That statement has always been crunchy to me because once I felt I lived into this,
Oh my goodness,
That's it,
And lived in that direction,
There was always something along the way that kind of went,
Well,
There's over here too,
And there's over here also,
And why don't you try this?
So as an example,
I've told you about the art path I'm on,
Well,
I've also been incredibly impassioned about renovating homes.
Doing the whole,
Not flip,
Because we don't flip them,
I don't flip them,
But a couple of my sons and I have renovated homes from,
It hasn't been touched in 50 years,
That kind of thing.
It's got some serious things to be done to it.
I've torn our bathrooms,
Three of them,
Down to the studs and rebuilt them all.
So that's where I came into conflict,
I'm like,
If I like all these things,
How do I define this purpose?
And certainly I can't.
I can still draw a bead on that definition if I choose to,
If I choose to assign myself a purpose in life,
And what it is and what I've done in the past is call it to create an environment.
So all this renovation and all this beauty making of my own homes is obviously creating an environment that other people can come to and enjoy.
Opening up spaces within this compound,
We call it,
That I have for others to create studio space,
That's creating an environment where the energy and the spirit of the place enhances those other people's works.
And then of course my own art.
My hope is that whoever chooses to own my art or is gifted it,
And I hope they like it,
That it becomes an enhancement to the environment that they put it into.
So through all that I do,
I am creating that environment.
Now that's pretty amorphous and it has no solid,
Substantial practicality in the world that keeps me putting food on the table,
But that is what I want to discuss today.
So that purpose,
I consider it an evil word now,
Because it can mess so many of us up.
I've started to,
I've reframed it for myself and that's what I'm bringing to you.
Like I said,
That no longer do I ask myself or do I find myself seeking this great purpose or asking myself what is my purpose,
I look to my body's response to anything I'm doing.
In other words,
Am I being purposeful?
And that too can be a little treacherous to walk because feeling purposeful can drive a person to become that do everything,
Serve everybody,
People pleaser that gets you burned out.
So it's a fine,
Tenuous balance,
But so worth exploring.
So for me,
I play into that.
I'm Virgo rising.
For those of you who know astrology,
Virgos are the doer,
Taskmaster,
Get things done.
So this is very intuitive to me to identify with feeling purposeful rather than seeking a purpose.
But there my sun sign is Sagittarius and Sagittarius are kind of known to be seekers,
To be finding,
You know,
Always going after something,
Understanding or comprehension or spiritual alignment.
And yeah,
So perhaps I'm a mess for that.
Regardless,
When I can listen to my body or even lose all sense of that body mind,
I come back to myself and I'm like,
Ah,
You know,
I was just in flow,
That traditional flow.
So instead of,
As I said,
Asking myself,
What is my purpose and what I'm here for,
Which can tend to feel like it's closing in or I'm closing in on myself,
A tightening,
I ask or note that boy,
That task,
That event,
That determination to attend and show up for,
That just felt so purposeful,
So aligned or so in flow.
And that is where I start leaning.
That is where I start walking.
That is the answer to that ultimate question that I keep pursuing.
And through behaving this way,
Through shifting that mindset,
Just the finest tuning of those words and the definitions I put to them has helped me trod forward,
I won't say more successfully because that's another trick word,
But more confidently and happily,
How about joyfully,
And with more of the wonderment and curiosity around where this is taking me.
So for those of you,
And I imagine all of you,
Who have some sort of spiritual backing,
I consider this kind of the body-mind-spirit interchange.
In my Catholic upbringing,
I took it to mean like this top-down,
It was very top-down patriarchal understanding the body-mind-spirit,
Like spirit spoke to mind and body reacted,
Like it had to be this top-down filtering.
And anymore,
That's not the case.
That isn't a good interpretation.
That isn't a right interpretation.
If you go back to that biblical,
All those biblical teachings that our religions are pulled from,
Other teachings as well,
And kind of dissect the words and re-translate them for yourself,
You'll see the body-mind-spirit has always been meant to work in union,
In harmony.
And that's again where this noting where I felt purposeful helps me feel aligned to my purpose,
Because my body is acting in the way that my soul or spirit is.
I call it dreaming.
So dreaming is spirit talking.
Dreaming is,
I don't mean necessarily sleep dreaming,
But conscientious dreaming and,
You know,
Visioneering is spirit driven.
It's your soul's energetic vibration speaking to your body and mind.
So you get this dreaming going,
You get this visioneering going,
That is a spirit acting in you.
And then your mind starts to say,
Well,
How can we?
And if you're on target,
You won't listen to how you can't,
You listen to how you can and just lean into that,
Just that little bit.
And then it shows up as a task for your body to do,
To work.
And then it'll go back to a little more dreaming where that new idea of how to comes back and then your body does the work.
It's the harmony.
It's the flow.
Every part of us,
Every part of divine human earth,
All work in harmony if we really start looking at it.
And it's a beautiful way to start living your life.
It's a beautiful way to start creating your art.
It's a beautiful way to take a tool in hand and purposefully put it forward into the world.
Again,
It's super,
Super nuanced and subtle,
But I have found that small shifts in my thinking or my defining of more traditionally recognized words,
My own defining of them and processing of them has opened myself up wildly as opposed to that clamping down,
Opened myself up wildly again anew to possibility,
To curiosity.
And it feels really good.
Now,
Not all the time,
Of course.
In addition to this,
I'm speaking from a place about purpose versus purposefulness.
From this internal space,
This body-mind-spirit that is all your internal vibration and it's all an internal,
It's all the inside job part of it.
But also,
Part of this dynamic is each and every one of us.
We're not solo pegs on a board that never interact.
It's those other conformations coming in,
Those externals that then start to align with your own alignment and add fuel to the purposefulness.
As an example,
I've been struggling with using my voice,
As I kind of said at the beginning,
And saying,
This is the path I've been on,
Try it.
Or this is the path I've been on,
Keep going.
Or this is the path I've been on,
It's wonderful,
It's arduous,
I just want,
I tell myself my voice isn't needed,
That everybody will find their way.
And I know that's the devil,
If you will,
In my head and I also know that it's true.
So in finding that or in accepting that and not demonizing one or the other,
Those external conformations come in when I've stepped out just a little bit or I've leaned into that dream just a little bit and done my,
Made my action from my mental saying,
Try that.
An example.
I was invited to be a speaker at the Canadian,
International Canadian Encaustic Conference.
You don't have to know what that is,
Sorry.
By a dear friend who decided to spearhead this,
They haven't had a conference before.
It's a United States,
More United States based organization,
Although they're international chapters.
Encaustic is the paint medium I most often use and what I'm known for.
Okay.
So I've been hemming and hawing,
Yes,
I would like to do that,
That external invitation is so precious.
But my voice starts,
You know,
I want to speak out,
I want to have a voice,
I want to have the confidence to speak and believe that my words will touch somebody and have an impact.
But I also shy away and say,
They'll figure it out,
Everybody will figure it out for themselves,
They don't need to hear me,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
There's no place for me here.
I'm sure all of you can identify in your own way,
That push and pull of,
Of showing up in the world.
So we've been having this email dialogue and I,
You know,
The last minute I'm like,
No,
You know,
I'm not going to do it.
There are other people who will teach and such.
I'm getting away from the teaching platform,
So it's not for me.
She hit me up this morning and she's like,
Trish,
Do you know how many people are out there?
Let me see if I can find it.
Like she said it in just the right way.
And this is where I'm saying those external confirmations are incredibly valuable because she said it in just the way and through these,
You know,
Paragraph each back and forth emails where it just started coming together a little more.
And the way she said it just hit my heart,
Hit my spirit and was like,
Yes,
I don't know what I'm going to say.
I have a year to figure it out.
I don't know what I'm going to say,
How I'm going to present it or myself,
But I have a feeling because I finally said yes.
My mind saw the way through because my spirit wanted it and my body was able to read her responses and take in that information.
Okay,
I'm drawing too much to the body,
Mind,
Spirit,
But you get the idea that it just,
You know,
It finally,
It was that final,
As I'm saying,
External confirmation from somebody else whose energetics,
Through her own body,
Mind,
Spirit aligning,
Came in and connected with mine and added this fuel to my direction.
I want to go,
But I have apprehensions around it,
You know,
Like what do they,
What do we call it now?
Imposter syndrome.
I don't think it's that,
But it's kind of like,
I also want to just go squirrel away in the studio.
It's the balance I have to find between never showing up again and showing up.
I don't have to show up all.
By speaking on the path you've been on,
She was drawing to the point that,
You know,
It's rather ambiguous,
Amorphous,
And I'm also having so much self-doubt right now about where I want to go.
She says,
You're going to give people permission to live with honesty and acceptance about all that shows up in their life as an artist,
To not put themselves in a box of painting as I have done to myself,
Put myself in the box of encaustic painter and teacher and canvassing the world with this information until I,
You know,
I couldn't do it anymore.
So where was I?
The whole self-persona fell away.
So she's saying,
Thank you.
You have to do this because no matter what you say or how you say it,
If you can tell your story,
You're going to give other artists permission to have faith and courage to keep listening to themselves and moving forward.
So I'm sharing all that,
All this,
Because one,
The experience was so visceral and right now this morning,
You know,
That just right external thing coming in at the right time because I scheduled this live four days ago and wasn't quite sure what I was trying to say.
And then she handed me that living example of what I'm trying to say here.
Keep going.
Talent is a really,
Art,
Creativity is a really crunchy place to be in the world right now.
Okay.
A lot of places are a little tenuous and crunchy,
But it's so worth it.
And if you could only do it part time and you have that nine to five hat on the rest of the time,
Don't begrudge it.
Just do what you can.
I know you hear,
We hear this all the time,
But it's so worth it.
Get a part time job,
Get a seasonal job and do art the other six months,
However it looks.
Rent out your property,
Plant your gardens and do a,
You know,
A farm stand in addition to your art.
You just don't know.
But the point is,
The driving point is,
If it hits your soul,
If your spirit resonates with this sense of purposeful showing up,
Don't dig out what your purpose is,
Like to create art this way or to teach this way or to exhibit over here.
Just stay in that vibration of purposefulness,
Of alignment.
And when you lose faith,
When it starts to get tenuous,
When you go to bed at night and you're exhausted and your mind says,
Well,
That was a waste of a day.
You should probably look for a job tomorrow.
Keep going.
Tell your brain,
Thank you for the information,
But I'm just going to go to sleep right now.
So you wake up and reignite that,
Rekindle that stove of your spirit and get back in there.
And this doesn't have to necessarily be speaking to just artists.
For goodness sakes,
We all struggle in all wakes and walks of life,
But there's a place for all of us.
And when we all start to better align to that spiritual dream space,
To that spiritual visioneering space so that it starts speaking to our minds and living through our bodies,
We are all going to be able to,
Watch out,
Here I go,
Hold hands around the world and look like we are the more united front that humanity should be.
I don't speak this way in normal everyday conversations.
Maybe I do,
But I love it anyway and I believe it.
So it comes through in whatever else I say.
Click the close and just sit here for like 30 seconds with your eyes closed and breathe it into your heart so that even if it isn't a conscientious remembering,
Your spirit and your body are going to remember.
So you constantly pull your mind back to,
You are in the right place,
Keep going.
If you're listening to that purposeful sensation and living the best you can.
