Denita Benyshek

Artist Essentials

Wichita, WA United States
Northern America

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BIO

With a longstanding interest in the spiritual in art, my academic research in on contemporary artists as shamans with publications in the USA, England, Poland, Hungary, and China. In 2018, I was initiated through a traditional ritual by three women shamans from South Korea. Last year, while working on a chapter for an anthology about science, the sacred, and the arts, I asked my artist self a research question: how to represent, visually, the life force I saw and felt while immersed in nature?

That question led to the Cosmic Spirits series. Using a meta modernist method that integrates traditional drawing and painting with contemporary photography, digital art, and printmaking techniques, I take photographs of details from my garden paintings. The photographs are digitally manipulated to create radiant, symmetrical organic abstractions. Each design is printed once, then further developed with drawing and painting, adding richness, layers, and depth, resulting in unique multi-media artworks. In an iterative process, I might again take a detail photograph of the new artwork and go through the same cycle, making another new, unique 2D artwork. Sometimes, I paint and/or collage directly on canvas to create new works.

I am following in the tradition of the mystical Southwest Transcendental painters and the new generation of transcendental artists. My personal sources of inspiration are caregiving my disabled adult son, my Czech background with elements of folk art and animism, my work as a healer, shamanism, quantum physics, and transpersonal psychology.

STATEMENT

In 2018, Dr. Denita Benyshek was initiated through a traditional ritual by three shamans from South Korea. For this artist, creativity is an act of service as she creates uplifting and transcendent healing experiences for the viewer.

Benyshek also serves as the caregiver for her disabled son, who asked her to create a garden around their home. While recovering from surgery, he went into the garden to enjoy nature’s beauty. Concurrently, OpenStudios selected Benyshek as the Botanica Gardens artist-in-residence. These gardens inspired a series of watercolor paintings and chalk pastel drawings.

While writing a chapter for an anthology on science, the sacred, and the arts, Benyshek considered how to represent her experience of the eternal life force in nature. She began integrating photography, digital art, printmaking, drawing, and painting. Each unique, garden-to-galaxy, mixed-media artwork provides access to a radiant, inspirited world. In this liminal space, viewers hear whispers from the garden and echoes from the cosmos.

Born in a Czech immigrant community of small towns and farms in Kansas, Dr. Benyshek earned a BFA and MFA in painting, a graduate certificate in the psychology of creativity, and an MA and PhD in humanistic and transpersonal psychology. She attended Pilchuck Glass School on a full scholarship and was artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation. For 15 years, she taught visual art and dance in the bush villages of Alaska. Her research, on contemporary artists as shamans, was published in the USA, England, Poland, Hungary, and China.

Included in group exhibits at the Bellevue Museum of Art, Whatcom Museum, Yakima Valley Museum, Owensboro Museum of Art, Coos Bay Museum, Corvallis Art Center, Museum of NW Art, Harvesters Arts, Ulrich Museum, and MARK Arts, Benyshek maintains an active art career. Her work is in the collections of the University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, King County Ethnic Heritage Collection, Museum of Glass Art in Ebeltoft, Denmark, and Snoqualmie Point Park. Clio Art Fair and Health Hub Gallery, both in New York City, LoosenArt/Millepiani Gallery in Rome, Italy.

The Commerce Club, and Cunneen-Hacket Art Center recently featured Benyshek’s work, with a 2025 solo show at Reuben Saunders Gallery and University of Michigan Health main gallery. She recently received grants from Koch Cultural Trust and Wichita Artist Access Grant. After living in the Cascade Mountains for 25 years, she is now based in Wichita, Kansas.