Article:
Artist at Work
BY DOLLY R. SICKLES | PHOTOS BY JESSICA BRATTON
A registered nurse by training, Shalimar Waffa was on track to become a nurse anesthetist when she became pregnant with her daughter, Rowan, during the pandemic. “Rowan was my fourth pregnancy,” she says, “and a miracle baby.” Pregnancy gave her the perfect opportunity to step out on faith and completely shift the trajectory of her life.
“I’ve been painting for 16 or 17 years now,” she says. Beyond a ninth-grade art class, Waffa hasn’t had any formal training—just experimentation. In college, she started “playing around with acrylic paint,” and over time developed a love for texturized art and impasto style. “Really, for the last 10 years, I’ve just done oil painting.”
She posted photos on Facebook, and her work was a hit. It was selling, and its popularity began to soar when COVID-19 shut down the world. The pandemic ultimately presented the perfect opportunity for Waffa to reinvent herself as a full-time professional artist. She found a prime location in downtown Cary and hasn’t looked back since her gallery opened in October 2021.
Originally from San Diego, Shalimar grew up in Durham and graduated from Jordan High School. Her adoptive mother, Letlet Crosby, is a medical technologist at Duke Hospital and still lives in the Hope Valley Farms community. Her husband, Brad Waffa, owns Truss Vet, and Shalimar’s paintings adorn the walls of its clinic locations in Cary, Durham and Greensboro. They have their one daughter, who just turned four. Rowan is a fan of Sleeping Beauty and, of course, her mom.
Waffa was named after her mother’s favorite perfume. Like her namesake, Shalimar is mythic and memorable, and a “daring gem,” though she’s not a fan of the scent. Her mother died when she was seven, and Waffa was adopted by her aunt Letlet, who raised her. “My imagination saved me,” she says. It’s the founding principle for her inspiration and aesthetic. “Nature is a huge inspiration,” she continues. “And any sort of grueling journey.”
Healing Through Art
Waffa’s own grueling journey started with her mother’s passing and followed her as she navigated fertility issues and motherhood. But this Renaissance woman found respite in painting and the fantastical worlds she creates on canvas, and it provided a much-needed balm from her stressful days in the nursing unit. “I was a code blue nurse in the ICU. In medical responses, I was the first nurse on the scene,” she says. “At any time, I could’ve walked into something so risky.”
Trauma surrounded her, but art allowed her to heal and, in turn, help the community bounce back from the isolation of quarantining. “People were staring at blank walls; they were working from home. I made more in sales as an artist than I did as a nurse for the whole year. It was a significant time for me.”
Art by Shalimar
Art by Shalimar is the perfect location to exhibit her modern fantastical escapes. “I looked at getting into galleries, and they wanted fifty percent—so that’s how I decided to do things on my own,” she says. “There were so many guidelines to becoming an artist and putting yourself out there. I’ve done everything, just, rogue.” But her persistence as a working artist and arts entrepreneur enabled her to connect with intention to the community, where art enthusiasts and collectors found a kindred spirit on her canvases.
“My artwork and stories are very personal to me,” says this visual storyteller. “You have to put yourself out there to make stories that connect. One of the most successful collections I’ve done was based on my fertility journey,” she says. “It was a 10-piece collection based on every single hurdle of the fertility battle I had. It was the lowest moment of my entire life, and I feel like I’m still recovering from it.”
Her fall 2024 collection, Fantastical Escape, allowed the audience to “go into a place of imagination, [to] things that brought them joy as a child.” They were very Disney-inspired themes that encouraged viewers to escape from the grind of everyday life.
Process and Influences
Waffa paints with oils, creating pieces with deep personal meaning. She paints straight to canvas, with no prep or sketching, and sees the palette knife as an extension of herself. The thick, textured, impasto style is redolent of the Impressionists and her favorite painter, Claude Monet. “I don’t like to have a piece that looks like a photograph on the wall. I want you to look at a piece in a much different way, as a scene and escape.”
Synesthesia guides her hand as well. She sees color with music and has done collections based solely on music. “If I have an idea in my head, I can paint it pretty quickly.”
Art is an investment, and Waffa works on creating generational art that appeals to broad audiences, resonates joy and will stand the test of time. “My goal in all of my art is for my paintings to have energy.” Benjamin Franklin said, “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Waffa’s paintings share her trauma, struggles and triumphs with the community, enabling her, in turn, to continue on her own healing journey.
Shalimar’s gallery and studio is located at 121 E. Chatham Street in downtown Cary and welcomes walk-in visitors or by appointment. You may visit her website at artbyshalimar.com or @artbyshalimar on Instagram.