As a woman who has travelled around the World- to over 60 countries, and often alone- I have always been especially eager to learn of other women throughout time to have done the same. Some of my favorite books and films (The Oblivion Seekers by Isabelle Eberhardt; West With the Wind by Beryl Markham) are about women travellers. Over the Winter, I went through my numerous travel journals to provide Leah and Leroy Garcia and Blue Rain Gallery with material for a hardcover art book that they are publishing on my behalf. In the course of revisiting my own journeys, I delved deeper into my research of other women who share my persistent wanderlust.
I came across the story of Elspeth Beard: the first British woman to ride her motorcycle around the World alone. Now an accomplished architect in her 60s; in 1982 at 23, she set forth and proceeded to ride across the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Europe. She had incredible adventures- all pre-internet and cellphone: near death experiences, being robbed- and also being taken in and cared for, and even running out of money and taking temporary work along the way. Upon her return to the UK, she stashed all the documentation of her unprecedented journey: journal, photographs, audio tapes, and memorabilia, into a box in a garage and moved forward with her life. She restored the derelict Munstead historic water tower in Godalming— where she lives to this day, and converted old horse stables to a successful architectural firm. She eventual obtained a pilots license. She has one son. Some thirty years later, there was an interest in her remarkable journey, and she was finally encouraged and supported to write a book, Lone Rider.
In my portrait celebrating Elspeth, I have fittingly used ephemera I hand gathered all over the World: torn posters from Greece and Sicily (one proclaiming ‘Nomad Off’); playing cards from Asia; baggage claim tags; a torn poster from Buenos Aires that states: ‘Free’; Indian incense boxes; a ‘park and ride’ ticket from a Catania, Italy, bus station; wild sardine tins; and so much more..
