Hank Spirek

“I was born in Chicago 72 years ago and moved to Australia 33 or 34 years ago. I've, off and on, been a professional artist for the last 52 years — whenever I could afford to be a professional artist.

I've lived in five different countries and exhibited in five different countries. There always seemed to be a good reason to move and never enough to stay in one place, but I think I’ll stay here. I enjoy Orange, I like the atmosphere of the place, it is more-or-less easy to get around and the people have been friendly.

I moved here to Orange about a year and a half ago, because I heard that Orange had a good art society and they were sympathetic to artists.

Now that I'm retired, the goal is to just make enough money to buy my supplies and keep on producing work and exhibiting work. That's one of the reasons why the prices of my artworks tend to be low, I don't want to make piles of money off it; that’s not my goal. My goals is for as many people as possible to own my work.

I have a long history of doing bird-related paintings and figurative-related paintings — they are two things I tend to do the most, but I'm probably a better sculptor than I am a painter in many ways. It is a little bit hard to do when you're moving all the time, but I am going back to sculpture now that I'm kind of settled.”