Hi Robert, Victoria and Dougie !
I had a fun filled birthday party and I laughed like I hadn't done so in years !
I am pictured here with my art teacher, a professor from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid and his wife Macarena. The blond one, is my cousin Patricia and her fiancee Dr. Rafael Garcia, an oncologist and without a shadow of a doubt, the most handsome doctor at the Ruber Hospital in Madrid. On another photo, Peter is caught eating a strawberry jelly. The atmosphere was great and the venue at The Palace Hotel was really excellent; the food, the attention, the music, everything. We were 13 of us and everyone had a jolly good time, a day to remember as long as I live. They all had such a good time, that I even had a request to celebrate my birthday more than once a year.
Jane
Completed Portrait
Jane: Next Steps
Jane: New Portrait
Vanesha: Finished Portrait
Vanessa's Portrait
Ruth's Portrait
Lunch, San Lorenzo
Hotel Christmas Tree
Dinner at the Dorchester
Birthday
Happy Halloween!
Sacre-Coeur
Montmartre by Night
Restaurant Le Consulat
Artists Quarter
Montmartre by Day
Louvre Museum
Pyramid
Cathedral
Notre Dame
Paris
Eiffel Tower
Peter in an Irish Pub
View from our room in Donegal
Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin
Entrance to the City of Ek-Balaam
Tlaloc God of the Rain
Mouth of the Serpent
Angel in Ek-Balaam site
Sculptures in Ek-Balaam
Ek-Balaam
Man on a Ledge
View from our room
Cancun
Hotel Beach
Cancun
Enjoying the sunshine
Ek-Balaam site
Sunset from our room.
Sunset. View from our hotel room.
Posing with a stolen apple.
"Mmm, Cheese!"
"No Mr Blair, I am not Spanish"
"What do you think, M. Sarkozy?"
Farmland
The Shrewsbury Road
Pastels
Farmland
Pastels
Other side of kitchen.
New kitchen
Merida, Mexico
Merida, Mexico
Peter, Maria and Richard Hammond
A Romantic Cruise
Lunch at Merida
Lunch at Cancun
Guest bedroom fireplace
Beams in Office
Master Bedroom fireplace
Patty Spilsbury, my sister
Not exactly a picnic
Towards the Farm
Back of our house
At the back of our home
Snow scenes at home
My son Hector Birchwood meeting Mrs Thatcher.
Hygeia
Work in Progress
Thanks to our camera crew for the photo
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Filming in Ireland: Heir Hunters
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Painting in Progress
Work in Progress
Floodlit Cathedral
Lincoln Cathedral, Evening
Early Evening in Lincoln
Painted when I was 13 years old.
Venice
More detail
Our House
Another show for Heir Hunters.
Filming at the Bear
Bear Hotel, Hungerford
Maria, Victoria and Peter
Victoria
Interview
Filming at Denbigh Record Office
Formal night on the 2010 cruise
Black Poodle
The younger Leonardo
Friends from El Salvador in Madrid.
Charlie 2
Sweet Dreams
Charlie
Cat-nap
The Adoration pf the Shepherds
Guido Reni (1575 - 1642)
Lough Rynn Castle Hotel
Leonardo da Vinci
Dog2
Dog
Maria
The Crystal Palace in El Retiro Park
The Royal Palace
The Plaza Mayor
La Cibeles Fountain and the Post Office
The River Manzanares and the Cathedral
Monastery of the Escorial, Spain.
The Royal Palace, Spain.
Birthday Celebration.
Birthday Celebration
Like the wine, I get better with the years.
Maria Spilsbury's Painting
Nudes
Nudes
Nudes
View from our Balcony
Neptune Fountain
Red Roses
View from the back of my House
View from my House
Sra Dina de Spilsbury
My Mother
Port of Isla Mujeres
Our hotel beach
View from Tulum
Tulum
Turtles
Tulum near Cancun, Mexico
Detail of the same Church
La Merced Church, Antigua, Guatemala
La Merced Church, Antigua
Earthquake damage
Church of the Cross
Another Guatemalan Church.
Cathedral, Antigua Guatemala
Parrot and me
Courtyard, Convento Hotel Antigua
Room at Convento Hotel Antigua
Room at Convento Hotel Antigua
Mother and Child
Flowers
About Me
- Maria
- Maria Spilsbury Birchwood started painting at an early age at the studio of the Spanish painter Don Valero Lecha and the muralist Violeta Bonilla, pupil to the great Mexican painter, Diego de Rivera. She received her first commission at the age of 13: a commission to paint a bullfight.When she was in her teens, she entered a competition and learned that she had won first prize. She was presented to the sponsor of the competition,who offered her a scholarship on behalf of the Dante Alligheri Society to study art in Rome. Maria continued her painting studies in Madrid, Spain at the school of San Fernando under the tutelage of the foremost landscape painter Jose Sanchez Carralero. She moved to England where, in 1982, she married forensic genealogist Peter Birchwood. Over the years, Maria has exhibited her work widely in different countries; at the Barbican Gallery in London, in California where she worked as a scenic artist on theatrical backdrops, Bedfordshire, and Wales, where she now lives. A recent commission was to paint the portrait of Liberal Member of Parliament Lembit Opik. The portrait is now hanging in the House of Commons.
Flowers in a Vase
23 comments:
Hi Maria
I can see you'll have many happy memories of your birthday. It looks like a very nice place where you were celebrating it. I think you were right to sit back a little from the soprano - I have visions of her hitting a high note and Peter's strawberry jelly shattering!
Heh,heh,heh. The way she was hitting those high notes it was more like the glasses were going to explode Robert! Yes, the Palace is a very beautiful hotel and its nearly 100 years old. Would you believe, underneath, it has an underground tunnel which connects this hotel to the Ritz, as at one time, the Ritz and the Palace Hotel belonged to the same owner 100 years ago, although the Ritz as a building is much, much older, as one time it used to be one of the Royal Palaces, so the last one, has three other underground tunnels built on in case the King needed to make a quick escape through it, if there was trouble.
Now the Palace Hotel has opened a small museum with items of interest, like a few drawings on napkins by Salvador Dali, who used to frequent the Palace with his friends Federico Garcia Lorca ( a poet ) and the surrealist film director Luis Bunuel. There is also a note from them to the bar-tender saying that they will pay their bill on Tuesday of next week when they get some funds and sorry it has to be that way, since they won't get any funds until then. The three of them used to go and drink bottles of champagne at the Palace and also at the Ritz where they also went to have their hair cut. Now this note, is worth more than all the bottles of champagne they ever drank there. Among the other guests the Palace has had, are Pele, The Beatles, Margaret Thatcher and so many other famous people, like toreros, Royalty, Nobel prize winners of literature, the list is quite long. Many things have made history there which are known to us and countless others that are not are rumoured have happened there. If only the walls could talk ! The Palace Hotel is a fascinating place. It was built in only 15 months ! at a time when there was no heavy lifting machinery but only oxe carts and horses to carry the heavy loads of stone. In every sense, this is a remarkable place.
I like buildings with a history. But I thought that maybe since Dali was a surrealist, he could have drawn a picture of a banknote and handed that to the bartender. The trouble for Dali would have been, the bartender might have drawn a picture of a bottle of champagne and given it to Dali in exchange. And when Dali complained that the champagne was flat, the barender would have replied "What do you expect from a two dimensional image?"
I think there's a cafe in Paris which has the table where Napoleon played chess, and no one's allowed to sit there. I don't know whether Napoleon won the game or not, but I believe he used to help Josephine play and give her tips. Hence the expression : "Not that knight, Josephine."
Hi Robert,
Actually, this was pre-surrealism times; when Dali and his friends were students. When you are a University student, for some reason, money doesn't stretch that far and you try to think of ways to stretch it like chewing gum. I had two friends during my time studying there, who would make competitions in saving money and they had appointed me as their judge for this frugality contest. One of them would save on postage stamps by rubbing wax on it, and then, the addresee would have to rub the wax off, to take away the ink of the stamp and send back the postage stamps to be re-used again. The other one, would save on nail polish by combining the half used bottles of nail polish by pouring them all into one bottle coming out with an unusual colour from the mixture. And both of them would raid the coffee, tea, and chocolate that were on the breakfast table for their own personal use in their rooms, rather than buy their own, they both figured they had already paid for it and so they were just taking what was already theirs and why pay twice for the same items ? I could not decide who was the most frugal of them on this bizarre contest, so I told them it was a draw. Their degree of stinginess never ceased to amaze me ! Its not as if they were both poor either. One of them, her family owned a large tie factory and the other one, her father owned a car dealership for luxury cars like Mercedes Benz, Jaguars.
No. I have never heard of that cafe in Paris Robert but it sounds interesting. Yes, I do love buildings with a history too, especially the Belle epoch type of buildings. I also love the medieval timber buildings as well.
But why have two half-used bottles of varnish? Why not finish one bottle and then start the next?
Hi Robert, well because they are not the same colour. Usually we have more than one colour varnish depending on what clothes you wear. Usually, the reds are worn in the winter and the more pastel colours like pinks are summer colours so by the time summer comes, the half used nail polish becomes sticky and the application on the nails is not smooth; its a bit like trying to paint your nails with chewing gum ! Some nail polishes can be fixed by adding a little bit of nail-polish-remover inside the the bottle of the nail polish and then shaking it vigorously but it doesn't always work, so pouring one half used nail polish into another one that wasn't too used, was simply a novel way to recover something that normally is just thrown away therefore extending its use. A good make of nail polish can set you off about seven pounds for a student, that is a lot of money. I used to be more practical than that. I would pretend I was interested in buying something that I knew was being given as a freebie if you bought a product, so I would convince the shop assistant that I needed to try the product first, in order to see whether it agreed with my skin and if it did, then I would come back and buy it. So she would oblige by not only giving me samples of skin creams but also small bottles of perfume or the latest eye mascara or whatever freebies they were giving away.
That's very clever, Maria.
On the subject of saving money, it seems to me that Iceland have been saving themselves money. They are currently running an advertising campaign for their £1 items. Well, I used to get 6 Linda McCartney veggie sausages for £1. Sure enough, the price is still only £1 - only now you only get five sausages. What a wonderfully generous deal from Iceland. We're supposed to be in a time of negative inflation where prices are going down. I haven't noticed it.
I think if I was in the nail varnish business, I'd simply sell bottles half the size for half the price. I bet they'd be popular.
Hello Maria,
sounds like you had a wonderful happy time for your birthday, in a very beautiful place. The photos are good, everyone looks very happy.
What else did you do whilst in Madrid?
Robert, yes I agree with you that if you were in the nail polish business and sold half size for half the price, that they would be very popular.
But before you rush into this venture, check your calculations as I feel the profits will be less due to the overall production costs. Meaning due to the cost of the bottle, labels etc .. whatever else is involved.
Hi Victoria & Robert,
The other thing we did was to go and see the Joaquin Sorolla exhibition at the Prado Museum which was really wonderful, the exhibition kicks off from his historical paintings depicting scenes of the Spanish Independence from France, to his monumental panels that make up the series 'Visions Of Spain' painted for the library of the Hispanic Society of America in New York. The exhibition spans Sorolla's entire career with examples of all the genres in which this Valencian painter worked and includes his most celebrated masterpieces. I really enjoyed it. There were, at least 100 paintings. Then we had lunch at the Ritz Hotel, where they have an outdoor restaurant so it attracts small birds and doves in search of crumbs and in order to detract them, the hotel hires an owl which has become their mascot since the birds are frightened of owls the birds do not come down to the patio. On the days the owl is not in residence, the hotel staff hang a fake owl from a tree but it looks more like a pinata hanging from a tree and so the birds ignore it, and come down anyway as they are not fooled by it, but its a fun source of amusement now. The waiters at the Ritz in Madrid are very attentive and friendly, then its a pleasure to go back again and we always do. Then we took one of those red buses that tourist take, since Peter wanted to see an overall view of Madrid with explanations of the places of interest and have the freedom to hop in an out of the bus wherever we wanted. I also showed him Moncloa, where the student residences are and where I used to live in Madrid when I was a student, he was very impressed by the quality of the area, since the Spanish Prime Minister official house is not far from there too. Then we went to see an exhibition of a friend of the family the Mexican caricaturist Luis Carreno, I was invited to the preview of his show but could not attend, because it was during the week we were in Edinburgh, but we still went to see it and took photos of his really excellent caricatures. Luis Carreno does his caricatures for one of the most prestigious newspapers in Mexico City that is how he makes his living. I can show you some of his caricatures that I photographed from his show at the Mexican Embassy in Madrid, which is just five minutes away from the Palace Hotel. Its just a shame I missed Luis, he also drew the portrait of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as you may know, Garcia Marquez is the Nobel Prize winner for Literature who is a very good friend of his. He has promised me he is going to introduce me to Gabriel Garcia Marquez but that moment never happens. Either Gabriel or Gavo as his friends call him is out of the country or for instance, this year we won't be going to Mexico as usual but we will go to Australia instead where we have to make plans to meet in Sydney Victoria.
Robert & Victoria I just wanted to add,
There is a nail polish brand already, called Mavala that does half size nail varnish bottles and sells them at half of the price as the other brands its a swiss made brand. Obviously, they thought about it and the good thing of getting it half price, is that you can get two different colours instead of one.
Hi Maria and Victoria
I'll leave the nail varnish to you two. I didn't even know they used different colours for the winter and the summer.
Independence from France? Is that the Peninsular War against Napoleon?
Yes, Robert that is right, the Peninsular Wars, when Napoleon had seized Spain and had installed his brother Joseph as King of Spain. This was the war where the English, at the command of the Duke of Wellington helped to liberate Spain from Napoleon's clutches. Remember that we had already discussed this earlier on, when we were talking about how Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, (the famous Spanish painter) painted Lord Wellington's portrait and where Goya became quite exasperated every time Lord Wellington won a new medal, which meant Goya had to add it to his portrait. Goya said that this was the most frustrating picture he had ever had to paint. In my opinion, painting the medals was a tiny token of gratitude for Wellington's help in gaining freedom for the Spanish from the butchery of the French.
Still, poor Goya. If I'd been him, I'd have added a few medals the Duke hadn't yet won, to save time - including a Blue Peter badge. Hee, hee.
Robert,
There is a crystal Palace in Madrid exactly like the Crystal Palace that was built for the Great Exhibition here and that it burned down. I bought a postcard of the Spanish Crystal Palace which is quite conveniently in front of a lake ! in the park called El Retiro. Will put the photo soon.
Maria, that's very interesting. Why was the crystal palace built, then?
Also, the Escorial - it looks as though it's on the coast. That's where Phillip II stored all his relics, isn't it?
Hi Robert, The Crystal Palace in el Parque del Buen Retiro in Madrid, was inspired by the Crystal Palace in London. The Spanish Crystal Palace was designed by Ricardo Velazquez Bosco in 1887. But whilst the one in London was burnt down, the Spanish is still here to be enjoyed in this wonderful park called El Parque del Buen Retiro which was once the site of staged Naval battles to entertain royalty. Nowadays, there are free concerts like our proms in Hyde Park and also the summer book fair that has just started. The day we left, no less, which was a great shame ! as I would have loved to have gone. This book fair is more or less like the one in Hay-on-Wye book festival in Britain, you know, where the authors also come and do book signings. Its great !
The Escorial is one of the many Spanish royal sites, is an historical residence of the King of Spain. Well, like you would say Windsor or Balmoral. The Escorial is in a place called San Lorenzo, which is about 47 kilometres away from the capital, Madrid.
The Spanish Royal family and the British Royal family are interlinked by marriage more than once in history. One of the daughters of Queen Victoria, married the King of Spain, and right now, they are celebrating the anniversary of her wedding in Madrid. The day she was married, a bomb exploded in one of the carriages behind, where she was travelling and some people died. The Princess reaction was to say: " What a welcome ! the Spanish have had for me " or words to that effect.
Yes, his relics are there, since the Escorial is not only a mausoleum, it is also a Palace and a monastery created by Phillip ( Felipe II )
Hi Maria and Robert,
yes .. it will be nice when you come to Sydney Maria. The postcards you have put up are lovely .. the Crystal Palace is beautiful.
I have an old engraving picture of the one in London .. when I first went there many years ago I was so disappointed not to see it. In my ignorance, for some reason I thought it should still be there.
Hi Maria and Victoria
Wow, it's rather amazing that this glass structure has survived all this time. There is a crystal palace in England, but it's a football team.
Hi Victoria & Robert,
Oh thank you Victoria, it will be a completely different experience going to Australia for us. I have seen on T.V. the flying foxes, and the bush babies and koala bears I have only seen kangaroos in the Bedforshire zoo when they escaped by jumping over a fence ! and I would very much like to see the famous Sydney Opera House.
The cruise we are taking is going to take us all around the Australian coast and then the ship is going to Singapore and Thailand, but we will arrive a few days before the cruise starts to be able to see the sights in Sydney and hopefully we can meet somewhere !
Well Robert, I suppose the Crystal Palace in Madrid has survived this long because it is located in a park which has a few acres of woodland I'm not sure if its 40 acres and I suppose it helps that its being surrounded by trees and also the building is in front of a lake with a fountain and maybe that helps to keep it cool or maybe another reason is, that the gates of the park are shut over night. Yes, Victoria, I know the feeling of wanting to see Crystal Palace and not being able to see it. I wish they had rebuilt it, since it was such a really beautiful building. Now we just have the not so nice Millennium Dome which looks like a white marshmellow ! or maybe a mushroom?
Hello Maria and Robert,
I hope Maria that you are not expecting to see koalas in Sydney (except at the zoo) or kangaroos hopping down George St as some tourists do!
It is easier to see kangaroos though .. if you go out a bit to the right spot, but koalas are harder to spot.
I had my photo taken for the newspaper once when I was working, for an airline publicity shot .. cuddling a koala.
It wasn't that pleasant really, his claws dug in, I had to be really close to him and was scared he might bite .. and all the time expecting him to pee on me. At least that didn't happen.
The Opera House will be very easy to spot, and does look very spectacular in our magnificent harbour.
That will be a truly beautiful thing for you ... sailing out of our harbour.
Other places, especially Europe have much more history and beautiful buildings, but when you fly in over Sydney and the sun is shining .. well, nothing beats it.
Long weekend here now for us .. Queens birthday, we get a day off and it is not really even her birthday! .. enjoy your weekend, the both or you.
Ahh the cute,cuddly,lovable Kaola bear....sure seems to be all those things,but.....I recall an Australian saying to me,some years ago that if I knew how many deaths were directly attributed to Kaola bears ,I wouldnt think they were so cute....or cuddly.....and definitely not lovable!.......and I dont think id relish the thought of being kicked in the mouth by a Kangaroo either-come to that.
Victoria & Dougie
Mmmm... that has sort of shattered my expectations of a cuddly Koala bear. Manufacturers shouldn't keep making them as fur toys for children. That must have hurt Victoria to have a koala bear digging in the sharp nails on you. In that case, yes, we will have to see them in the zoo. I am not as brave as you. Especially as Dougie is saying, people have been killed by koala bears, who would have thought that such cute little animals are so lethal ?
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