The Path between The Worlds
- pigment print
- $0
- Denita Benyshek
-
Available
Please contact artist for price. Price depends on print size and substrate.
I was born in north central Kansas, in a small, rural community of Czech immigrants. In festivals, embroidery, quilts, and certain ways of being, there were elements of Slavic animism and folk belief. My childhood was rich with close relationships to nature through my grandparents' farm, gardening, and camping. My parents moved to Wichita, Kansas, where my father, Eldon Benyshek, worked as a graphic artist for Boeing. My mother was also artistically talented, a fine seamstress, taking me to dance lessons. Both parents talked about design choices. In elementary school, the Board of Education gave me a full scholarship to study at the Wichita Art Association.
After earning a BFA in painting at Wichita State University, I worked part time to allow time to make art, primarily painting and also multi-media performance integrating visual arts, dance, and writing, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. The gift of time expanded during a Ucross Foundation artist in resident grant, allowing me to concentrate on painting day after day.
I moved to the Pacific Northwest, attended lectures at the Jung Society in Seattle, worked as a runway and print model for clients such as I. Magnin's and Nordstroms, painted and sculpted scenery for Seattle Repertory Theater, Intiman Theater, Pacific NW Ballet, and a few movies, and taught as an artist in the schools, teaching visual and performing arts, primarily in remote, Alaskan bush villages.
In the isolation of the arctic winter, without the distractions of modern life, I traveled far into the frontier of my soul – and enjoyed hiking on the frozen Beaufort Sea. As a form of dreaming-awake, paintings from this time tended to be symbolic and archetypal. The peripatetic lifestyle (and travel in bush planes, skiffs, and snow mobiles) required an art medium that was light weight and quick to dry. I used watercolor and gouache on cotton rag paper.
Before my MFA studies, I traveled twice through Russia and taught as a visiting artist at a folk arts college in Pskov. What I learned there echoed what I knew from my childhood and extensive reading of Slavic literature. Many Slavic artists synthesize animist folk beliefs into their fine art creations. The Slavic perception of reality is richly layered. Magic, fantasy, visions, and dreams are interwoven with sensate reality. Nonlinear time, reverie provoking discontinuous space, intuitive combinations, and a belief in the transcendent power of beauty is typical of much Slavic art and my own creations.
Two weeks before starting the MFA program at the University of Washington, I injured my drawing arm in a horseback riding accident. I could not even hold a brush or pencil. I underwent a year of intensive physical therapy and slowly learned to draw again. I drew in the dark at the Seattle Opera and at other art events. This work continues into the present (see the Artists Art Audiences tab). I also began a series of large scale works using reverse-painted glass. Thanks to a full scholarship from the Pilchuck Glass School, I studied with a Czech master and learned how to engrave glass.
For 25 years, I lived with my son, Hans, in the Cascade Mountains. During this time, I chose to discontinue exhibiting my artwork. Yet, I continued painting, writing, publishing, performing/presenting at conferences. I worked extensively in sketchbooks. Paintings were primarily of my garden and landscapes inspired by the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. I created a lush garden around our home, painted doors, floors, and furniture.
There was an active jazz scene in the nearby town. After years of deliberate auto didactic study of singing, while washing dishes or painting, there was an opportunity to formally study jazz vocals.
To financially support my child, I returned to school and earned an MA in psychology, a graduate certificate in the psychology of creativity, and a PhD in humanistic and transpersonal psychology from Saybrook University in San Francisco. My dissertation considered the similarities between contemporary artists and shamans. In 2018, I was initiated by three shamans from South Korea. During this time, my dear son was severely ill, missed four years of school, and became disabled. I am his devoted caregiver.
I continue integrating auto ethnography, poetry, creative nonfiction, and visual images in published research on artists-as-shamans and art audiences as shamanic communities, as well as topics such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the COVID pandemic, and Black Lives Matter (BLM). I also create multi-media art performances/research presentations for professional conferences.
In 2021, my son asked to move away from our beautiful, but isolated, elfin mountains. He wanted to live in a city. I had long desired to return to the prairie and Wichita because of the active, welcoming, supportive arts community and the kind, friendly people. In 2022, we moved into the Crown Heights neighborhood, I received a Botanica Gardens artist-in-residence grant from Fisch House OpenStudios project ,and I began planting another garden around our new home. I now work as a counselor part time, four to ten hours a week, to give me time to paint, write, garden, and enjoy my son's company.
For me, making art is an act of service. whether I am creating visual art, creative nonfiction or poetry, theater, dance, music, or multi-media performance. During daily meditation and shamanic prayer, I invite the spirits of nature to enter me and speak through me. I create compelling doorways through which onlookers enter visionary realms. In this liminal state, my audience experiences awe-inspiring moments of beauty while undergoing expansive and integrative, meaning-making creative processes of their own. They are simultaneously connecting intimately to self, the eternal cycle of life, and the cosmic soul of nature through which we are all together traveling.
2013
PhD in humanistic and transpersonal psychology, Saybrook University.
2010
Graduate certificate in the psychology of creativity, Saybrook University.
2004
MA psychology, Saybrook University.
1995
MFA painting, University of Washington.
1994
Pilchuck Glass School.
1979
BFA painting, Wichita State University
- Created: February 03, 2024
- Collections: Medicine Woman Gallery Collection