People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you know which one it is,
you will know what to do for what person.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidedance and support. To aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an invonvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What you must realize is that your need has been met, your desire fulfilled, their work is done.
Some people come into your life for a SEASON because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done and they usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real but only for a season.
A Life time friendship teaches you lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Accept the lesson, love the person and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind, but friendship is clairvoyant.
Thank you for being a part of my life, whether you are a reason, a season or a lifetime friend.
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
10 comments:
That was a lovely piece, Maria.
Hello Maria and Robert,
I think finally this has worked!
Yes it has ..I can't believe it!
Yes very nice words Maria,
however I feel whether it be a season or a lifetime .. it is ALWAYS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION ..for a reason.
No accidents in the Creation.
Robert,
I tried to write to you on the blog
from London after your suggestion re visiting Sir John Soane's House.
Yes, it is a wonderful place .. so eclectic, with many beautiful and peculiar objects. I have been there a few times, and was hoping to re visit this time, but seemed to run out of time.
The other place I always enjoy is the artist Lord Leighton's House, it is really unusual and exotic, different to John Soane's but equally interesting.
Your comment 'elsewhere' was perfect. I think when you write more things as I tend to do ..you are just providing more ammunition.
I have only a handful of real friends who I would do anything for to the best of my ability if they ever need me. They know they can count with me at any time.
With 'The Heir Hunters' show there are many things being said about Peter, my son and myself by strangers who do not know us and whose opinions are not based in reality but a perceived reality planted by others who do not know us at all. People I have never met. So, are their opinions important to me? the answer is no.
They can fantasize all they like about me and my love ones, perhaps it brings a little interest in their otherwise dull lives. It is much like being described about something you have never tasted. Whilst you haven't tasted it you cannot form a real opinion unless you do.
It is Saturday today a beautiful sunny day and we are off to see the Tolkien book fair.
Hi Victoria
Good to have you back. I’ve never been to the Leighton house. Melbury Rd, isn’t it? I imagine it has a Pre-raphaelite window on the landing? I must go and see it.
Maria, good luck with the Tolkien. I think most people have only a handful of real friends. They may have lots of acquaintances, but that’s not the same thing as real friends.
Hi Robert,
no it is 12 Holland Park Road.
Smaller than the other house, but exotic with a great Morroccan tiled section. And of course some of his paintings, not sure if I recall such a window, but could well be.
I could easily live in such an artistic type house ..but then again I could live in Kensington Palace easily too ..if I could afford the servants, and the heating!
Agreed on the handful of friends ..how do these mainly young people keep up with 500-600
facebook friends? I am always behind with my handful of real friends
Hi Victoria
Yes, I can imagine living in such a house in the LVP. The trouble would be, the primitive medical care. I think in such circs it would be wise to have a doctor or dentist amongst one's friends!
I think one of the marks of friendship, is if you can phone someone you haven't spoken to in years, and then talk away for an hour or so as if you last spoke to them yesterday.
Welcome back Victoria. As in the three musketeers! Mmm.. That sounds like a wonderful place you are both describing and I would have to put pencil in my list of places to see, next time I'm in London. I have to say, I have never been there before.
The Tolkien Festival was really wonderful. Peter and I saw a wooden story telling chair. Imagine the type that you can see Merlin the magician sitting on, or a gobbling. The more we saw this chair, the more we liked it and in the wooden grain, by chance of nature, it had a dragon and an elf edged in the grain of the wood! It is something really special and magical. I don't have any space where to put it right now, but it will definitely have a space in the 'new' house. There was also a very interesting lecture by Dr. Dimira Fini where she talked about fantasy, and if this genre is valid in literature. She described how Tolkien drew from the Norse mythology, Plato's classic story of Atlantis, the war trees of Macbeth as well as race, gender and culture to weave his stories. She made something that for me always had been a soporific tale into a really interesting subject. I was most impressed. There were also excellent story-tellers as well as Welsh mythology.
Maria, like you I don't really go for all the trolls and elves and goblins, but maybe it's an acquired taste. I do like mythology though, but even there I think that some of the stories could be uncluttered a bit by getting rid of some minor characters.
Yes Robert that is true. I don't think I could read the book but why Tolkien wrote it is more interesting. He could see that the Scandinavians had wonderful stories but England didn't have any. The Scottish and the Welsh have wonderful Folk stories as well as myths and legends but not the English so he set out to invent some based on the Anglo-Saxon era because that is considered the golden age of British culture before it was ruined by the Normans
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