When we are taken out of our usual environment there are inevitably unexpected consequences. It was with this in mind that I set out over the winter break to travel across the country in my car with just my dog for company. I felt the need to shake things up and do something that for me was going to be both new and difficult. 

The first few days I found it hard to make pictures. I worried that I wasn’t making enough, that the journey would be a waste and not fruitful. But after a while that anxiety abated and I just started shooting, intuitively responding to the landscape and my environment as the conditions permitted. I took pictures while driving, in my room, in the morning and in the evening, waiting for food and touring landmarks, in diners and in bars.  

Away from my usual subjects it became clear to me that this journey was less about discovering the country, but more about discovering myself as a photographer and appreciating and examining what I was drawn to, to palette and atmosphere, to suggestion and stillness. There are no people in these images, apart from a couple of self-portraits. I believe this was part of letting go of the familiar and striking out, literally and metaphorically onto new territory. I needed to find a new cadence to my work, a new visual language to articulate what I wanted to say.  Stripped of my usual identities of mother and wife, I became simply an observer, a traveler, untethered.