Meet the Artist

She didn't plan to become an artist. It was the dream she never thought possible.

Shalimar Waffa has been painting for nearly 20 years. Everything she knows - the bold impasto, the layered texture, her signature pastelo technique, came from trial, error, and relentless practice. No formal training. Just one art class at a summer camp in Durham, NC.

That class came the summer before middle school, when a teacher named Mrs. Mary introduced her to painting freely and without limits. That idea never left.

She started quietly, building her art career while in nursing school and without an audience. Coffee shop walls. Tables outside grocery stores. Anywhere someone might stop and look. It took a full decade of showing up before she had her own exhibit.

Fourteen years after she sold her first piece from that coffee shop, a collector reached out to share that a close friend still had it hanging in her home. That same painting would cost eleven times more today.

The Technique

Shalimar started with acrylics, moved to oils for their depth and richness, and eventually found her way to palette knife painting, applying paint straight from tube to canvas. Bold, thick, impasto work became her signature. Nearly 90% of her paintings are made this way.

She doesn't force creativity. Emotion has to move through the work freely, and when it doesn't, you can tell.

After nearly twenty years, the palette knife has become an extension of her. When something forms in her mind, it finds its way to canvas in the way she intended.

The Work

Storytelling is at the heart of everything Shalimar paints, whether through personal experience, raw emotion, or something universally human. Every piece carries something real.

Her most widely resonant work came in 2021. Reflections Under a Rainbow, a ten-piece collection documenting her infertility journey, reached thousands of women around the world.

She is an empath to a fault. The state of the world shows up in her work, and she is open about her struggles with depression and anxiety. It is part of who she is and part of what she makes. That honesty is what draws collectors in, not just to the work, but to the story behind it. Many describe a sense of familiarity they can't quite place, as if the painting already belonged to them.

The Gallery

When Shalimar looked into showing her work through established galleries, she walked away. They wanted a 50 to 60% commission of each sale. So in 2021, pregnant with her rainbow miracle baby and at the height of COVID, she left nursing and opened her own gallery, a dream she didn't think would happen anytime soon.

She has never looked back.

Since opening Art by Shalimar in Downtown Cary, she has sold over 400 original works, with more than 70% shipped out of state and internationally. None of it would have been possible without the dedicated team she has built around her.

The studio and gallery is open for walk-ins and private appointments in Downtown Cary, North Carolina.

Before art, there was nursing. Shalimar spent years working in trauma, the ICU, and on the code blue team, and still holds an active RN license. Before that, she seriously considered engineering. She is a self-proclaimed tech geek. Becoming a full-time artist was never part of the plan.

She played flute throughout her youth and college years and can still pick it up today.

She loves cooking, entertaining, and making international food. Filipino cuisine is close to her heart, part of her heritage and part of how she shows love.

She met her husband on Facebook, by accident. She thought he had attended one of her gallery shows. He hadn't. It was meant to be anyway. They have been best friends for thirteen years.

She is drawn to the underdogs of the animal kingdom, reptiles, bugs, and creepy crawlers, the ones most people walk past without a second look.

She is passionate about human rights, world peace, and equality. It shows up in the work, even when she doesn't intend it to.

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years painting
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original works sold worldwide
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when the gallery opened