Denita Benyshek

COALESCE is a four-artist exhibit curated by Julia Rivera, at the new Health Hub Gallery, 138 5th Avenue, New York City. Opening June 28, 2025, 6-10pm.  Artists: Denita Benyshek, Gail Richardson, Mila Knoroshilov, Omar Ortiz Scott Thiele. This collection includes the artworks by Denita Benyshek in the COALESCE exhibit.

COSMIC SPIRITS: Mixed-Media Art by Denita Benyshek Opening reception Friday, February 7, 5pm - 8pm The Commerce Club at The National 150 N Main, Wichita, KS Curated by Tim Stone Cosmic Spirits provides the Wichita community with a preview of 30 mixed-media artworks by Denita Benyshek, before her art is featured at the Clio Art Fair, New York City, May 8 – 11, 2025. 

I am sharing this art with my Wichita community because many individuals and organizations contributed to this creative process. OpenStudios provided an artist-in-residence grant to Botanica gardens and the Koch Cultural Trust grant contributed funding for supplies. In person or via social media, friends and artists and art institution professionals generously offered support, engaged in deep conversations, provided articulate, poetic feedback, and followed the story line that led to this series. In 2018, the "mansin" (master of 1000 spirits) Kim Junghee and her two shaman assistants travelled from South Korea to initiate me through a traditional "Naerim Gut." Since then, I daily say a prayer that calls into me the spirits of the sky, mountains, prairie, earth, and cosmos. In this creative practice, I serve as a channel for these nature-inspired works as gifts to the viewer. I was led by a research question: "How do I visually represent my visionary experiences of nature in a way that can be shared with my audience?"

 Inspiration exploded while working on the final edit of a chapter, Art Audience as Shamanic Community, for the anthology, Transdisciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts (Cambridge Scholars, UK). At Botanica, and in the home garden, I made over 30 drawings and watercolor paintings. As I photographed this work, I made many detail photographs to highlight the abstract qualities. I intuited that these details were leading me forward. I began a circular process, digitally manipulating the photographs to create symmetrical designs, printed these images with archival pigment inks, then developed the prints further with acrylics, watercolor, gouache, chalk pastels, oil pastels, and more ink, creating unique, mixed-media, works of art, which then inspired the large-scale painting on canvas. The symmetrical images, an integration of traditional and contemporary art techniques, are dynamic, radiant, and evoke an awareness of the sacred, cosmic life force. 

In 2018, three shamans travelled from South Korean to the mountain home of Denita Benyshek. Led by manshin (master of one thousand spirits) Kim Junghee, Benyshek went through a traditional Naerem Gut initiation ceremony. Benyshek is an artist and a researcher on contemporary artists as shamans. At the 2024 Clio Art Fair, New York City, Benyshek performed a ritual, "Calling Down the Gods." This series of artworks are photomontages of moments from the ritual layered with images from Benyshek's visual art. These photo montages, combining ritual, costume, and visual art, are a means of sharing a magical and visionary experience with viewers, a keepsake of the journey, and a portal to a visionary state of being.

For Benyshek, making art is an act of service. During daily meditation, Benyshek invites the spirits of nature to enter and speak through her artworks. When immersed in nature, Benyshek feels the presence of an inspiring lie force which is translated into visual art and performance rituals, providing the viewer access to a radiant, mystical, inspirited world connected to the cosmic cycle of nature. 

Dr. Benyshek grew up with gardeners, helping her parents and grandmother in their flower and vegetable gardens. Her grandmother studied horticulture at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the 1920s. Benyshek's fascination with the natural world extended into studies of biology, zoology, botany, and field ecology. For 25 years, Benyshek lived in the Cascade Mountains. on acreage, where she created a large garden that included an 18' waterfall and a pond near the front door. In 2022, Benyshek and her son moved to Wichita, Kansas. She wanted to return to the active, supportive art community in Wichita. OpenStudios selected Benyshek as the artist in residence for Botanica Gardens. Benyshek's son is in constant pain, anticipating two surgeries, her son asked her to plant a garden around their new home so that he could sit outside amidst nature. These gardens served the source of inspiration for this series of drawings and watercolor paintings, Into the Garden. As the caregiver for her disabled son, painting outside gives the artist a moment of respite yet she is nearby to help if needed. In the morning, she takes a cup of coffee outside, to listen to the birds, enjoy beauty, see the cycles of nature turning. A certain sunbeam at a certain angle shines on the garden and the artist is inspired to paint. Or she goes outside in the evening, to watch a sunset and see the stars emerge, again finding inspiration in the night garden. Chalk pastel, watercolor, and ink on paper, these artworks inspired the Cosmic Spirits series and also a book of poetry. Into the Garden will be exhibited at Reuben Saunders Gallery, Wichita, KS, opening First Friday, April 4, 2025. The story of this work will be shared at an art/lecture/research presentation at Harvester Arts, April 11, 2025. You and your guests are invited to attend.

As I move through the world, I am seized by a significant moment, dense with meaning, the light "just so",  a striking composition. In this ecstasy of seeing, I take a photograph. 

The photographs serve as visual research data, crystallizations of experience, framing memory, making statements saying "This is important. This is significant. Attend. Integrate. Remember."

Photography is also an important step in the iterative process I use to create my mixed media works. Photography is a means of communicating with my peers and social circle, when my opportunities for leaving home are limited by caring for my son. 

When I was a young child, everything was a blur, faces, letters on book pages, the teacher's writing on the blackboard. I had a hard time learning to read. I could not see clearly until I was seven years old. With corrected vision, I could suddenly see children on playgrounds, leaves and bark on trees. I was astonished by the visual world. I am still astonished, every day amazed, enveloped by the ecstasy of seeing. Photography provides me with a way to share the ecstasy of seeing, inviting viewers into this experience.