About
McKayla Mae Bensheimer is an American printmaker and sculptor based in Indianapolis, Indiana. She received her BFA in Sculpture from Herron School of Art and Design in 2019. Since graduating she has focused on printmaking and travel, and how these two personal interests interact.
Bensheimer’s intent is to depict the contemporary human experience through figural portraiture and sculpture in a variety of materials such as relief and intaglio printmaking, pastel painting, drawing, and a variety of three-dimensional mediums.
Bensheimer has shown her work in the USA and internationally. She has exhibited at the Indianapolis Art Center, Eskenazi Fine Arts Center, Storage Space Gallery, and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery. Her public works include a collaboration for a walkway mosaic installed at the Elmira Annis Irvington Civic Plaza in Indianapolis, IN.
Artist Statement
My work is primarily figural in nature. I use portraiture and scenes taken from my daily life and travels to create a visual history of my own experiences as a woman from the Midwest in the United States. I am influenced by contemporary art and also artists from the past such as Toulouse Lautrec, Henry Matisse, and Kathe Kollwitz and how they use their own unique styles and interests to create works that depict their experiences.
In my practice I work with different printmaking techniques such as aquatint etching, monotype, and relief printing. Color has increasingly become an important part of my work as I continue to cultivate my own unique palette . In all of my work, I aim to convey the beauty of humanity and the joys and horrors of life.