University of Phoenix

Faculty Member, College of Arts and Sciences

Other Affiliations: Saybrook University, College of Psychology and Humanistic Studies
University of Washington, Art
Wichita State University, Art

Doctoral Candidate

Saybrook University

Thesis Title: A Theoretical Exploration of the Similarities and Differences between Contemporary Artists and Shamans

About

Denita Benyshek is a professional multi-media artist, a devoted educator, and an international cross-disciplinary scholar.

Denita's paintings were shown in over 20 solo exhibits and over 60 juried, national and international exhibits including Redefining Visionary Art in New York City. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Glasmuseet (Glass Museum) in Ebertoft, Denmark, the King County Cultural Heritage Collection, Harborview Medical Center, and University of Washington Medical Center. The University of Northern Iowa, McPherson College, and Wichita State University commissioned multi-media performance artworks from Denita. She received grants from the Ucross Foundation and the Alfred G. and Elma M. Milotte Foundation, plus numerous scholarships for art and psychology.  Denita also worked on several films, such as Disney’s Chips the War Dog, and as a scenic artist for major national theatres such as the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Intiman Theatre. She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of American Women, and Who’s Who in American Education.

As a clinician, Denita provided psychotherapy to a wide variety of individuals from many ethnicities and specialized in recent immigrants. She performed diagnoses, designed treatment plans, coordinated care, and used play therapy, sand tray, art and dance therapy, humanistic/existential, and Rogerian/person-centered psychotherapy techniques with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. Denita uses the creative process to assist people in making life transitions and creating new, functional, and self-actualizing lives.

Denita contributed to her community by: providing pro bono psychotherapy services to low income artists;  organizing the first Northwest Women Artists Lecture Series to provide balance to college art history courses that did not include artists who are women; creating artwork for a view point park in the mountains to promote wilderness conservation;  serving as a grant juror for arts in education programs with the Seattle Arts Commission and King County Arts Commission; directing a nonprofit organization serving adult artists with severe disabilities; teaching mural painting in the Washington State Reformatory; and, directing radio plays for a closed circuit station serving individuals with visual disabilities.  An anthology of writing about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, entitled Season of Dead Water,  included her interviews with bird and animal rescue workers. 

For 15 years, Denita taught art, dance, performance, and theatre in the remote Native American villages in Alaska. She also taught visual arts and performance art at the University of Alaska, drawing, painting, art history, and introduction to art at North Seattle Community College, and visual arts at the Pskov College of Folk Arts and Culture in Russia. At University of Phoenix, Denita teaches psychology  and humanities including mythology, adult development, and multiculturalism. 

Teaching is one of her favorite creative endeavors and a lifelong passion.

Denita's prior education: BFA, Magna cum Laude with departmental honors, from Wichita State University, an MFA  degree from the University of Washington, MA in psychology and a graduate certificate in creativity studies from Saybrook Graduate School.  In addition, Denita studied several styles of dance (ballet, jazz, and modern), plus theatre directing, acting, and improvisation. She also studied Jungian Psychology at the Carl Jung Society in Seattle and glass engraving at the Pilchuck Glass School.

Currently, Denita is a doctoral candidate in psychology at Saybrook University.

Denita’s theoretical research integrates art and psychology, focusing on the cross-cultural healing practices of traditional  shamans and how some contemporary artists integrate these healing processes into their work.  In addition, she is studying the creative process of the art audience as a contemporary shamanic community. These two topics are the focus of the book she is currently writing. Denita presented her research at conferences of the International Society of Shamanistic Researchers (2009 in Fairbanks, AK; 2011 in Warsaw, Poland) as well as the 2009, 2010, and 2011 conferences on Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing. Denita’s research will be published in upcoming issues of ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation and Shamanism in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the Society for the Study of Shamanism, Healing, and Transformation.
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She has two homes, an urban pied-à-terre where her son attends school, and a home in the Cascade Mountains near Seattle, with four family poodles of assorted sizes, one fluffy cat, one mammoth donkey, and a variety of amusing chickens.  Denita enjoys playing piano and harp, singing, gardening, hiking, camping, swimming, opera, foreign film, and other cultural events - especially good, extended conversations.

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