At the end of the day these are works of the imagination. Somehow in Shaw’s densely marbled surfaces we discern snow drifts and gnarled treeroots, rock falls and seismic upheaval, a world in flux. Surfaces that should be smooth and seam-

less are disrupted by globs and cracks, pours of paint that should be abstract are cut and collaged to mimic a tree. She retains a sense of abstraction by imposing it on the natural world. Shaw’s work engages the tension between picto-

rial space and material surface to operate on both abstract and representational levels. ‘Landscape’ is considered a subjective, psychological space operating as a memory of a place. Shaw is exploring the ‘memory’ of the material, the ‘memory’ of paint to mimic other forms of the physical world. But Shaw’s landscapes are also those of our memory. The inevitable attempt to ‘identify’ in a world of abstraction. This is pattern recognition indeed, in the flux of abstraction a new land triggers primordial memories.

Ashley Crawford, Critic, Writer, Curator, Catalogue essay 2006

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