L'Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World, after Courbet). Painting

Dr. Benyshek was born in a Czech immigrant community. She 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. In 2018, Benyshek underwent a traditional Naerim Gut (shamanic initiation) with three women mansins (shamans) from South Korea. Her research focuses on contemporary artists as shamans, with publications in the USA, UK, Poland, Hungary, and China. Her artwork was included in group exhibits in west coast museums, with solo exhibits in Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, Sun Valley, ID, 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 of Ebeltoft, Denmark, and Snoqualmie Point Park. In 2022, OpenStudios selected Benyshek as the Botanica gardens artist-in-residence and, in 2024, she was awarded the Koch Cultural Trust enabling grant. She is a member of Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL. Her work is currently on exhibit at Viridian Artists, New York City, NY. Statement My artwork is influenced by my Czech heritage, gardens, nature, quantum physics, life sciences, folk art, animism, and transpersonal psychology. As is common in Slavic art, visions, and dreams are interwoven with sensate reality. My visual language integrates heightened color, nonlinear time, reverie-provoking discontinuos space, intuitive combinations, and a belief in the transcendent power of beauty. My creative process: (1) gardening and immersion in nature, (2) watercolor paintings in the garden, (3) photography of the watercolors, (4) digital manipulation of detail photographs, (4) archival pigment ink prints, (5) prints are further developed with drawing and painting (chalk pastel, oil pastel, watercolor, acrylic, graphite, ink), (6) creating unique works of art, (7) this process also inspires drawings and paintings on canvas. In 2024, I created over 300 digital images. These symmetrical abstractions represent my ecstatic experience within inspirited nature, radiant, powerful, mystical, and magical, represented in a form that can be shared with the audience. For me, art making is an act of service. During daily meditation and shamanic prayer, I invite the spirits of nature to enter and speak through me.