INTO THE GARDEN:
After living in the Cascade Mountains for 25 years, Denita Benyshek returned to Wichita in 2022, with her son.
OpenStudios selected Benyshek as the artist-in-residence for Botanica. Benyshek’s son has difficulty walking,
with constant pain. Anticipating multiple surgeries, her son asked her to plant a garden around their home, so
that he could sit in the garden and enjoy nature. So, Benyshek began designing and planting a new garden
around their 1930s home in Crown Heights.

While Benyshek’s son recovered from surgery, she went into the garden with a cup of coffee, for a moment of
respite from caregiving. Inspired by the beauty of flowers, plants, and trees, Benyshek brought her
watercolors, inks, and gouache paints outside. With her two poodles nearby, she painted, representing
morning and evening light, conveying the magic of growth, and celebrating life, through transparent veils of
overlapping color. Her dance training is evident in graceful lines and gestures, her musicianship in the rhythm
of colors and brush strokes. When completing a painting indoors, at night, she is usually singing.
Vibrating and glowing, the plants, trees, and rocks are depicted in the act of taking form, in an emergent,
transformational stage of “that which is coming into being.” In these small scale, intimate paintings, the viewer
may enter a world that is dynamic yet peaceful, ecstatic and calm, pausing for a still moment in the fleeting,
sweep of time.

ARTIST BIO:
In early childhood, Dr. Benyshek lived in a farmhouse, amidst a Czech immigrant community in Kansas. She
earned a BFA (Wichita State University), an MFA (University of Washington), and a graduate certificate in the
psychology of creativity, MA and PhD in humanistic and transpersonal psychology (Saybrook University).
Benyshek attended the Pilchuck Glass School on a full scholarship and was an artist-in-resident at the Ucross
Foundation, Wyoming. For 15 years, she taught visual art and dance in the bush villages of Alaska. Her
research focuses on contemporary artists as shamans, with publications in the USA, UK, Poland, Hungary,
and China.

Her artworks were included in group exhibits in west coast museums (Bellevue Museum of Art, Whatcom
Museum of History and Art, Yakima Valley Museum, Coos Bay Museum, Corvallis Art Center, Museum of NW
Art), with solo exhibits in Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, Sun Valley, ID, Wichita, KS, and Santa Fe, NM. Dr.
Benyshek’s work is in the public art collections of the University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview
Medical Center, King County Ethnic Heritage Collection, Glasmuseet (Glass Museum) of Ebeltoft, Denmark,
and Snoqualmie Point Park. In 2022, OpenStudios selected Benyshek as the Botanica gardens artist-in
residence, in 2024, she was awarded a Koch Cultural Trust enabling grant, and, in 2025, Benyshek received
an artist access grant from Wichita Arts Council.

Friday, April 11, 2025, 6:00pm, Dr. Benyshek will present a lecture on “Contemporary Artists as Shamans:
Near and Far,” at Harvester Arts, 120 E First St N, Wichita. The presentation includes the story of the garden
paintings and the creation of the book of poetry, Into the Garden.

Her work will be featured at the Clio Art Fair, New York City, May 8-11, with a solo exhibit in the main gallery of
the University of Michigan medical center, September 8 – December 5, 2025. Coreopsis: A Journal of Myth
and Theater will feature an interview with Dr. Benyshek in the spring 2025 issue.