“My energy at any given moment is revealed in my work. Each artwork guides me in a personal way.”
Shima Shanti is a contemporary encaustic artist and the originator of Elemental Still Point — a category of painting in which material process and perceptual threshold become the same act. Her work is built in layers of molten beeswax, earth pigments, damar resin, and fire — ancient materials worked until form emerges rather than being imposed. Her paintings are exhibited nationally at leading contemporary art fairs including Palm Beach, the Hamptons, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Scottsdale, and are held in private collections across the United States. In 2026, she was named a Luxury Partner of Sotheby’s International Realty through Big Sky Sotheby’s International Realty.
Artist Statement
I am an encaustic painter, working in the ancient art form of painting with beeswax and fusing each layer with fire. My work is rooted in a deep connection to nature, Spirit, and the elemental forces that have shaped my way of seeing. Water in motion, earth, light, and the vastness of the Montana landscape continue to move through my paintings as I explore what lies beyond appearance and what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to see differently.
I do not begin with a predetermined image. I allow the painting to reveal itself through the process, responding to each layer, each mark, and each movement of the torch. The work develops through intuition and attention, allowing energy, memory, and material to find their own expression. My aesthetic is minimal and restrained in composition. My palette is neutral, deep, and rich. Within that simplicity, unexpected levels of complexity emerge.
The revelation is in the process. Every brushstroke and pass of the torch asks for a choice; and each choice, as in life, affects the whole. Layers are built, altered, scraped back, and revealed, creating surfaces that are translucent, luminous, and storied. The process has taught me to trust what emerges rather than trying to control the outcome, and to treasure imperfection and the spontaneity of life.
I hold a special reverence for the unseen details within the complex and labor-intensive encaustic process. Beeswax, earth pigments, damar resin, fire, and Baltic birch panels are the elements through which the work comes into being. I am interested in what happens beyond the material—the space where painting becomes an experience of time, memory, movement, and stillness, and where something within us is awakened through attention.
My inspiration is rooted in growing up amid the abundance of water and endless big sky of Montana, a landscape that gave me an innate sense of color, space, and composition. Today, in the lakeside hamlet of Del Dios near San Diego, the timeless joy of lost hours in my studio and the simple pleasures of the outdoors balance the business demands and travel of my artist’s career. Across both landscapes, nature continues to remind me that stillness is never truly static; there is always something moving beneath the surface.
