ARTIST'S STATEMENT
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I make art as an act of service.
In 2018, the South Korean mansin (master of 1000 spirits), Kim Junghee heard stories about me and recognized many signs of my calling to shamanism. She invited me to undergo a Naerim Gut (initiation ritual). After I accepted the calling, she traveled from Asia to my home in the Cascade Mountains, bringing two additional shamans and a vanload of ritual paraphenalia. The six hour ritual was empowering, confirming, and transformative.
During daily prayer at my shindang, I invite a series of nature spirits to enter me, inform me, guide me, and help me serve. I receive "in-spirited" inspiration, insight, and ideas. This channel is always available and certain practices intensify the access.
In 2018, the South Korean mansin (master of 1000 spirits), Kim Junghee heard stories about me and recognized many signs of my calling to shamanism. She invited me to undergo a Naerim Gut (initiation ritual). After I accepted the calling, she traveled from Asia to my home in the Cascade Mountains, bringing two additional shamans and a vanload of ritual paraphenalia. The six hour ritual was empowering, confirming, and transformative.
During daily prayer at my shindang, I invite a series of nature spirits to enter me, inform me, guide me, and help me serve. I receive "in-spirited" inspiration, insight, and ideas. This channel is always available and certain practices intensify the access.
In 2022, I returned to Wichita, Kansas with my son. There is an active, supportive art scene here.
The shamanic model best describes my lifelong creative process and relationship with nature. My published research focuses on contemporary artists as shamans. The writing and research process contributes to my creative process.
In January 2024, while working on the final edit of this chapter, I asked myself an art research question: How to convey my animist, inspirited experience of nature in visual art?
Denita Benyshek, That Which is Emergent, January 2024.
Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, ink, archival pigment ink, on cotton rag paper.
Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, ink, archival pigment ink, on cotton rag paper.
Suddenly, the warm glow of inspiration filled me. I began integrating traditional drawing and painting with photography and digital art. I began making radiant, symmetrical designs, using detail photographs of drawings and watercolors of the garden. I enhance the archival pigment ink prints with layers of acrylics, ink, graphite, watercolor, gouache, soft pastel, and oil pastel. Each resulting artwork is unique.
Denita Benyshek, The Path Between the Worlds, work in process.
These radiant designs serve several purposes.
The ideas became more abstract, less illustrative, representing natural phenomena.
- As idea generators, I've made over 400 digital radiant abstractions accompanied by poetic titles and descriptions.
- As archival ink prints on cotton rag paper, which are then completed with acrylic paint, ink, soft pastel, oil pastel, or graphite.
- As sources of inspiration, departure points, for work made directly on cotton rag paper or canvas.
- As a means of translating the numinous and ineffable into physical art, to share ecstatic and visionary experiences of communication, relationship, and union with nature, time, space, and the cosmos.
The ideas became more abstract, less illustrative, representing natural phenomena.
Denita Benyshek, The Eye of The Storm, 2024,
oil pastel on black cotton rag paper, 22 x 30".
On Loan: University of Michigan Medicine, main gallery.
oil pastel on black cotton rag paper, 22 x 30".
On Loan: University of Michigan Medicine, main gallery.
May 3, 2025, with the exhibit of my visual art, I performed the ritual "Calling Down the Gods", as part of the Clio Art Fair's performance series, "Act as though God Exists."
My current studio practice is devoted to creating new work for a solo exhibit at MARK Arts, Wichita, Kansas, opening November 2026. Works in process are larger scale, on canvas, with a series of Radiant Beings wearing my kimono designs.
