Meet The Team at Graceful Waves Wellness Center
Get to Know Us
Shel Dunham, Clinical Chiropractic Assistant
Shel is the Clinical Assistant at Graceful Waves Wellness Center. She helps with onboarding new practice members, re-evaluating their progress in care, and celebrating all their accomplishments along the way. She loves connecting with and learning about everyone who walks through our door.
When not at Graceful Waves Wellness Center, Shel loves to rockhound, read and currate her extensive collection of books, work on art projects, and form cuddle puddles with her three cats (Lilith, Roux, and Marla). She spends shameless amounts of time tending to her many plants and zooming along the coast in her spaceship, Ziggy Stardust.
Shaukya Dekker, Local Visionary Artist
Born in Holland and inspired by the realm of spirit, Shaukya Dekker has passionately created art for more than 20 years. Her visionary paintings express a personal and collective process of healing and transformation. She has exhibited her work in numerous galleries along the Pacific Northwest, including the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita, and Vaulted Gallery in Astoria.
During a significant breakthrough in 2014, Shaukya gave up the brush and began painting with her hands, allowing luminous energies to come directly through her onto the canvas. In the tradition of the European masters, she uses high quality natural walnut oil paints which resist yellowing and don’t require chemical solvents.
Reviews of Shaukya’s Works
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Shaukya’s paintings vibrate with an intriguing energy, spell bounding the viewer into an unanticipated realm. She relates directly to the canvas with her hands rather than allowing an intermediary paint brush which enables her work to convey an even more direct, living presence. What an unexpected delight to come upon this until now unknown bold work! -
I found Ms. Dekker’s paintings to be incredibly full of life and force. Each painting I viewed had its own distinct character, although sometimes it would take some time before I could tune in to a painting’s particular quality and personality. They all communicated a deep sense of intimacy, of vulnerability-of something deep or mysterious being shown. A secret being shared. Beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes utterly joyful — the time I spent with her paintings was a ride full of feeling and delight.
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I am convinced that Shaukya should be identified as a Modern “Dutch Master”, since she is descended from that great tradition. She puts her own interpretation on the world in much the same way Van Gogh was considered original and abstract in his time. Most people have a spiritual feeling or religious connection, but even for those who just wish to let other people inspire them there is one or more paintings that will strike a chord or psychic connection. Miss Dekker seems to be discovering and exposing the sacred elements in her mystical subjects in the same way Picasso endeavored to show the pathos and pain inside his subjects. These paintings are the epitome of contemporary abstract art.