My name is Kate. I am an artist and I am trying to stop the world from glitching. Because, let’s face it, we are glitching.
But maybe I should back up for a second.
Let me properly introduce myself. I am Kate Shepherd. I am a very creative person - creativity is my superpower. I am a single mother of two beautiful creatures. I am a working artist and the host of The Creative Genius Podcast.
I had a very difficult childhood - maybe in part to make up for that, I spent a lot of my life busily and successfully manifesting all the beautiful things, Money. A great jewelry brand. An expensive home in a big city. And still there was something missing... and it wasn't material.
Around my mid to late 30s, I started to experience a deep yearning to be in service to something bigger than my own life - I felt this at the deepest parts of my being - but I didn't know what was calling me or to what.
So, I got married. Had kids. Continued building my business and life.
Then eventually came COVID, which for me included a long overdue divorce, homeschooling two kids under 9, and a surprise emergency surgery to remove something that had, unbeknownst to me, been making me quite sick.
After I walked through all that, the yearning still hadn't gone away. In fact the deep desire to be helpful, useful, in service to something…. seemed to have gotten louder. Only now I had more bandwidth to put some serious time into deeply reflecting on what this might be…
I was out for my early morning dog-walk one sunny June day in 2021, and as I came up the hill near my home, I kid you not, I literally heard a voice say - out of the blue - “And now it is time for you to start a podcast and your first guest will be Anong Beam” I whipped around. “What?” I thought, “not ME” I had never been confident about using my voice.
Whether it was to speak up for myself and what I needed in friendships or relationships or for something as innocent and joyful as singing (If you listen to Episode 1 of The Creative Genius Podcast Cultivating Creativity with Insiders's Studio Founder & Artist Amanda Evanston you'll hear me share how my grade 1 music teacher instructed me to “mouth the words, you don’t have a very nice voice, certainly nobody wants to hear it”) I had grown up believing that my voice didn’t matter. The idea of starting a podcast couldn’t have been further from anything on my bucket list!
But along with this voice that I heard that day, came one of the biggest, full bodied “yesses” I have ever experienced. So I went right home and emailed Anong (who said yes) and with an amused smile in my heart, declared out loud to myself and the dog, I am starting a podcast.
He looked at me blankly as if to say, “uhhh about what?” Right. What would I talk about? And with who? How would I learn how to interview people? How does one even record a podcast?
It became clear quite quickly that I was going to have to get serious about finding out what I knew enough about to authentically declare myself enough of an authority on to host conversations about it ON AIR! What could this thing be??
And that is when it hit me. And I mean it really hit me. I was sitting at the dining room table, staring off into space wondering about this when it did. And I think I even laughed out loud, because all of a sudden there I was staring right at my superpower, which had literally been right in front of me all along, I had just missed it because it was so obvious.
Creativity. My podcast would be about creativity.
Once I realized that it was going to be about creativity the rest came to me very quickly. I started to have memories of all the times that I was ever at a gallery or a market selling my art work. And people would come up to me with this sort of soft wish, saying to me, Oh, you're an artist, I wish I could be an artist. Which for most of my life up to that point had always kind of made me sad, and I could never really put my finger on why.
So I started to explore this as the topic for my podcast, it all fell into place so perfectly. THIS is how I could finally be helpful, in service. I had found my calling: to help as many people as I possibly can, in my lifetime, realize that creativity lives inside all of us. Realize that that wish is actually the creativity inside you trying to get out.
Once I started really looking at this, I started to see just how many limiting beliefs we set ourselves up with culturally around creativity;
-You either have it or you don’t (and most people accept that they probably don’t)
-That the products of creativity have to look a certain way. So if you make something it has to look or feel or sound a certain way.
-Where Creativity lives: it doesn't just live in painting, or sculpture, or, you know, the traditional sort of visual arts, creativity.
Creativity needs to be redefined.
And here is my starting point for redefining it: Creativity is the energy that animates the entire universe. It's the intelligence behind all of it. It's what's moving your hand across a canvas. It's what's telling you the next word to write if you're writing, it's what's telling you what note to play, if you're singing or composing. It's what lets you know what flavors work well or don't. And it is beyond that, it's also a curiosity, intuition, gut instinct & inner knowings.
You have had gut feelings, and what I am pointing to doesn't have to be big, if I ask you do you want to go out or stay in tonight? You'll immediately get a feeling: a yes or no. THAT is creativity.
And so we have this enormous, powerful intelligence within us. And most of us have been systematically taught to completely drown it out, discount it and shove it down.
Whether it’s to make a mark on a canvas that you're not sure about, or leave a relationship that isn't working, creativity does call on us sometimes to do things that put us in uncertainty, and that's very uncomfortable.
As a culture, we've done as much as we possibly can to eliminate any and all feelings of discomfort when in fact, it's those feelings of discomfort that when we listen closely to what they are telling us, have the power to deliver us to the truest, most vibrant, most fulfilling versions of our lives.
And so that is why I like to say humanity is glitching. We've become disconnected from creativity.
I am on a mission to challenge these limiting beliefs out loud in the mainstream, and to redefine creativity, to help as many people as humanly possible to remember what creativity really is and that it is inside each and every one of us.
Because the truth is, we're always going to feel like something is not quite right as long as creativity is not at the helm.
The Creative Genius Podcast is 100% devoted to the emergence of creativity in YOU. It is a love letter to everyone who has ever wished they could be more creative but believed they couldn't. Because that wish, is creativity itself asking to be set free.
Listen to The Creative Genius Podcast
Shop Kate’s Art online (and in person in North Vancouver, please email to set up a viewing)
Shop Kate’s Morning Moon Nature Jewelry
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