Kate Shaw’s Irrational Geographic, exhibited at Sullivan + Strumpf in 2008, was conceived during her residency at Flux Factory in New York. While in the United States, Shaw travelled extensively through the national parks of the country’s southwest, immersing herself in the vast desert landscapes, geological formations, and intense shifts of light and colour. These encounters with iconic terrains such as Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, and Arches National Park became a catalyst for her exploration of how the sublime and surreal intersect within the language of landscape painting. The resulting works fused poured-paint abstraction with imagined topographies, creating dreamlike scenes that blurred the lines between representation and invention. Shaw’s process embraced both chance and control: paint was poured, left to flow and pool unpredictably, and then coaxed into suggestive landforms. This method mirrored the layered histories of the landscapes that inspired her—geological time, Indigenous histories, and personal memory converging within a single frame. The saturated palettes and iridescent surfaces conveyed both the grandeur and fragility of the environments she encountered.