S5E16 Hans Van Weerd: Behind the Scenes of Managing a Zoo, and Art that Captures the Fleeting Moments...

S5E16 Hans Van Weerd
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Hans Van Weerd: Definition of my art is that I want to help people capture the precious moments in their life because they are fleeting moments. They're here today and can be gone tomorrow. And that could be about themselves. It could be about a loved one. It could even be about their garden or the home. All those things that you cherish now, but may not be here again tomorrow. 


Michael Bauman: Hello, everybody, whether you've been listening for a while or whether this is your first time here, we are happy to have you. Before we jump into the episode, it would be awesome. If you could write a review for this show, especially on apple podcasts. So it takes less than a minute or two. It's pretty straightforward.

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So welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. And I have Hans Van Weerd on. He's a biologist and he's spent years managing zoos all over the world. Originally from Netherlands and then moved to Australia. And then in the last couple of years, he actually decided he wanted to pursue his passion for art. So he creates beautiful works of art in charcoal and oil and watercolors, number of other mediums as well, with a primary fascination around people and the moments that you can capture with that and what makes them individual.

And I'm just really curious to hear how that works in his mindset and stuff behind that. So welcome to the show here, Hans.

Hans Van Weerd: Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me. 

Michael Bauman: Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit before we started the call here, but can you share for the audience, how many languages that you actually speak in which languages those are.

Hans Van Weerd: Well, yeah, I'm a little bit embarrassed about that. About the background is being Dutch and nobody speaks Dutch except for the Dutch and the south Africans. So already in high school, we had to learn English and French and German. Up to a level that you could actually converse with people when you visited those countries, except for the French.

Because the moment I remember when we went on vacation to France and you spoke the words of French, they thought, okay, this guy speaks French. And then they would answer to you. In a speed that was about 10 times your speed, and then you would be totally lost. Other than that, it bring you up to a level that you could actually communicate.

And then my career brought me to quite a number of countries about the world in south America, Southeast Asia Egypt. So I had to learn Spanish and Arabic and Indonesia. So hence those those languages. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. So I'm curious which one was the most difficult for you to learn?

Hans Van Weerd: I think it was and still is Arabic. It's funny. We have a coffee cafe around the corner and the owner is Lebanese and slowly things are starting to come back. So I do a bit breakfast there, but it was difficult to learn?

because the language is so different. And of course the reading and writing is different.

I can still decipher it but then I'm only at the level that I can read out loud what it says as I would read, finish, but I still wouldn't have a clue of what it says, except for those words, remember from memory that I used at the time, but that was the most difficult because it was so alien to all the other languages that have a common. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. I just saw that and I was very fascinated by that and I know you've done stuff all over the world. I wanted to, take it back to the childhood a little bit, and your dad was an artist and an illustrator, and I'm curious, are there, are, were there any specific moments that growing up really stood out to you in terms of you discovering your personal love of art or even like fleeting moments that you wanted to capture with art?

Cause I know that's a thread that's followed you into what you do right now.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah. One of the things that I do remember is that whenever my father was doing his work. My brother and I would be sitting on the floor and we would be drawing as he did. So it's in the genes to an extent. 

And one thing that I do remember is that my father when I was maybe 10 or so bought me a canvas, and then we worked together with our canvases on easels and I drew a seascape from a photo or something. And I found that incredibly difficult, but they also remember him encouraging me what to look at, what, to, what to try to catch you in that. 

And the other thing is whenever we went on vacation I took, paper with me and I drew stuff. And I still do but that's where it started. So I've been drawing all my life I'm very much inspired by, on my father. 

My father, by the way, who in the second world war in Holland when it was occupied by the Germans and in the last severe winter which was termed the hunger winter, because people in the Western part of country were starving because there was another food and there were all these blockades.

He tried to go to the Eastern part where there was still some effluence in terms of, and he paint farmhouses and farmers, families, any barter them for food. And that what he brought back to the family. So, yeah, it is something that has a deep history in our family, 

Michael Bauman: oh, wow. That's really fascinating. So, I mean, you re revisited that. I mean, you've, you said you draw like all the time and stuff and that's definitely helped you. But I'm curious to switch to the part where you spent the majority of your life in. Where did your love of animals and nature come from as well?

That's the other question I wanted to ask.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah, look, Michael,. I think it was concurrent. I've always been trying to keep animals in aquaria at home. And when we were in France, for example, on that vacation, I I used to try and catch lizards and bring them home. And it hasn't stopped since then. So I've always had Korean fish snakes, lizards stuff.

They would escape and it would drive my parents crazy that would fall on the floor and I had to catch it with them back into tanks. So that has been with me all my life. And when it came to choosing a career for some reason doing art was not really on the agenda and I'm not sure I've been thinking about, because two of my cousins did go to art school. And for some reason I decided not to, but it could have been art I think, but it goes with my hobby with animals I studied 

Michael Bauman: And so, you became, a biologist and then ended up managing a number of zoos, all over the world. I am really curious on what goes into the operational management of a zoo on the back end. Like what does that look like either on a day-to-day basis or what are like the variables that the moving parts are always thinking of, and managing?

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah. I think what help was of course you need to have some sort of, yeah, passion is probably a bit an overused term, but still you need to have a very strong feeling and empathy with animals depending on what sort of purpose they would have for you at that moment. 

I've also worked in aquaculture. Which is the culturing raising and breeding of fish for human consumption purposes. So that was a totally different approach because the fate of those animals was clear from the onset. It was killed and eaten. But even there, there was an underlying, thought of you are responsible for animals lives. So you need to make sure that as best as you can, you make it a life worth living before the demise. 

Now in the zoo, the objective is totally different. It is about having animals in what is in an old fashioned term called the collection. And those animals are there to not entertain people, but to show people how magnificent they are in the first place.

So you want people to really stand in all but also to show people how extremely rich their lives should be how beautiful they are, but also what role they play in the natural world or what is left of them and how they could, or should be able to exist. 

So the animals in the zoo, I'm much more an ambassador of the world counterparts and they serve to connect people with those animals and zoo people, including myself believe that is much more successful when you're actually eye to eye with an animal, albeit may be separated by a pane of glass rather than on the screen, on the television or an iPad.

And in order to run a zoo and the people that work there, you need to have that sort of basic feeling about animals and why they are there. And once you have that, then at least you can talk to keepers and managers, PR people, and you know, docents editors about those animals, because then you can convey what you think is important in their messaging or in the case of keepers, in their approach 

And the tricky thing is, and I think that would be the same for people working in hospital. When you work with a lot of people that are very passionate about what they do keepers us are very passionate about the welfare of their animals. And I know a lot of keepers, I think if you would really ask them and they would answer honestly, they rather have a zoo without visitors, because visitors are constantly disturbing what they want to do with their animals. Then having their animals perform and entertain the visitors. So having to deal with people that are that passionate times less understanding of the financial commercial and whatnot needs of the zoo was particularly. Important to you, my job. 

So managing that group of people, making sure that the basics were covered in terms of animal welfare and all that veterinary care, but also making sure that they were visible to the public without detriment to its welfare. So those challenges where sometimes difficult because they come from very opposite sort of directions, or you have to find common ground there, but at times you would have to come to the conclusion. There is no common ground. 

So maybe this species of animal because of its behavior on natural inclination should not be a zoo because there's no way you can show it without the animals suffering. Whereas, other animals are perfectly suited for alive in a zoo because they don't really mind people staring at them. 

And during lockdown, even though I wasn't working in the zoo or during the prolonged locked down on periods here in Melbourne, I've heard that some of the animals who were so used to visitors walking past their enclosures, sort of missed them and sort of adapted their behavior because their routine was gone.

So there's also almost like with your household pets, there is an interaction between the human and the animal behavioral parts that make up a day. And that happens in the zoo as well, even though they are wild animals, they are somehow adapted to live in the zoo. And if they cannot adapt and show signs of, you know, boredom or stress or prolonged stress, then you would have to take make a conclusion that, that animal shouldn't be there.

For example, I've worked in a city where there was a polar bear, a polar bears. In nature, particularly males, they walk for literally tens and tens, or maybe hundreds of kilometers to go from one part of the territory to the other, or to try to find a seal hiding under the eyes. And they were built and evolved to do the walking.

So if you have that animal in the confines of maybe a 10 by 10 or so, as in a very old to enclosure, that animal would be totally stressed, it would you know, pace and it would sway all those signs that tell you that animal is not happy. And. When people, the visitors become aware of normal animal behavior and abnormal behavior indicative of stress that goes and works against the zoo.

So for that zoo, we had to take the decision to move the polar bear out to another zoo. To a much, a bigger enclosure. And that was such a difficult discussion because although rationally many people, including the visitors knew that was the best thing to do emotionally, neither the visitors, nor some of the keepers wanted to part with that animal, because it was so iconic.

It was so part of their, you know, week weekly routine visiting the zoo. So those are the things that I found. Difficult. So the tension between animal welfare what people want as in the specialists, the keepers and what the visitors expect and the financial consequences of whatever compromise you reach there.

Because after all, you need to survive financially, not only to run the zoo, but also to be able to make your contribution to nature conservation, by participating in reintroduction programs, it was a long story. 

Michael Bauman: No, I really appreciate it. It's interesting to see, like you talked about those different, the different moving parts. And as you mentioned at the end, eventually you just have to, you have to compromise on some and you have to just discuss it in a way that finds the best medium point before for all of those. Sometimes divergent variables. 

So I was curious, and I didn't even think about this with COVID and not having visitors. How has that affected zoos? Just in general, like financially and stuff. How has that affected them? Do you know? I know you're not in that right now, but I know you still keep a pretty close eye on that.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah. I think overall most of the, let's say the good zoos, the zoos that have. The animal's welfare front of mind, and that has a tangible and visible contribution to animals' wellbeing across the globe. And therefore had been successful commercially and therefore had a good relationship to their, you know, council or government or otherwise, most of those have received. Financial support from those local governments or state governments, not only in Australia, but worldwide. 

And it doesn't mean that. they didn't at times let go of certain segments of the staff, particularly, you know, in the visitors realm and in the cafes and all that, because clearly I didn't get any visitation, but the essential parts that had to do with the animals, maybe online teaching all that, they were in many zoos kept intact also because of the support of all the others. Not only to governments, as I mentioned adults, so, visitors associations and all that. So I think all-in-all quite a few were able to prove through. And I don't know about the smaller zoos, but I could imagine that the smaller zoos some of them went under.

I'm not sure, but I could imagine. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. The other aspect I wanted to ask about, you know, the curiosity that I have around is how do you go about finding animals to be a part of the zoo, like finding and the transportation aspect of that? Like what does that look like on the back end?

Hans Van Weerd: Okay. I think in the old days, zoo directors just went out to Africa, Asia and caught the animals. And sometimes it sounds negative, but sometimes they were able to catch the last remaining a specimens or individuals of a certain species, such that, for example, due to zoos, the European bison, or one of the south Everett species of Gazelles is still alive because of zoos, because those that had them bred them and share them with other zoos. And therefore the species is still alive, albeit not in the wild, but in captivity. But those were the old these days. No animal is obtained from the wild anymore.

Justly. So, because they're not too many left but because of all those breeding programs, there is a fair number of animals that have representatives across the globe in zoos and or the more important species important as in visitor wise or because they are so rare. The international zoo organizations have appointed people that coordinate the, let's say the population management across those zoos of that particular species and the zoos that are part of those associations acknowledge the say deep authority, it's such that if that group, on genetic analysis, comparative analysis behavior, and, you know, stability in other respects can suggest that. Elephant from a zoo in the us, moved to a number of females in a zoo herd somewhere in Europe in order to be the sire of a number of calves that he would hope would then be born into doing Europe, which could then be distributed of other zoos that don't have any viable genes in.

So most of the animals zoos are obtained, if not all through other zoos that already have them at the more important species that is under the, you know, the watch will I have a coordinator who makes sure that inbreeding is postponed as long as possible and that the populations are kept healthy in a number of respects adults. So genetically for as long as possible. 

The only exception is that sometimes there is a need for intervention where a species is so threatened in a world that if you don't do anything, you just leave it be you're sure that it will be extinct within the next 10 years. And then after having received all the approvals of governments and conservation authorities a zoo can go out and catch a number of those animals, bringing them back to the zoo, start up a breeding program within that soon, and maybe a couple of zoo. 

And once the numbers have grown, they can either reintroduce them to that particular habitat where they got them from or secure another area. And some of those programs have been really successful. For example a Bandicoot, which is a marsupial over here in in Victoria and Australia has been re-introduced and has also been removed from the list of threatened species because the numbers have grown so much that they are. Secure for now, but also vultures in some of the Mediterranean islands in Europe and some of the ferrets in the us and the California and Commodore and maybe the ant eater in Argentina. There's quite a number of good examples of successes. Unfortunately there's still a much larger number of failures.

Okay. Not because of the intervention, but just because the decline is so rapid, that there's no way we could do anything about it, but sometimes animals, species go extinct before you even know it. So, Yeah. that's how people how zoos obtain their 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. So along that category, I wanted to ask, what are some of the things that kind of make you saddest about where the world is right now in terms of just nature conservation and animal protection, and you know, what are the things that, you know, should be looked out for? The things that you're definitely paying attention to.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think. The element of greed and short-sighted in humans that make for such a rapid decline of, for example, the rainforest in the Amazon and a few other areas. And I think if we were able that maybe it's too ingrained in a species, if we were able to curb the greed and be more content with what we have rather than always want you to have more, that some of that, that we now think is necessary for us to develop food or could be considered not necessarily if there is a lesser degree of need for, I don't know hardwoods, or maybe even soybeans or other stuff, then a lot of those places could be kept intact.

And the other thing is that there is an element I think of trying to go back to the pristine nature of nature as it was maybe a hundred years ago, 200 years ago. And that would include the introductions of species Species to parts of the world, whether we're not before, like in Australia, but those are other parts of the world.

And I think it would be good to for us humans come to terms with that because for us, but also for. Rest of the beings. The world has become almost like a global village. I read a piece once not so long ago, of certain fish species, which migrated over the decades, through the Suez canal from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean led to an enrichment of the fish in some cases, but it also has led to a domination of all species of fish and other cases which then sort of became a disaster for the world, the fishermen, because they could no longer, catch to species that they could market, but they only called a species that was essentially toxic for human consumption.

But the world is becoming more, a unity, and therefore I'm trying to go back to how it once was, I think is futile. I think it's more about trying to re almost reengineer nature after all humans are still a part of nature, even if we think that we're not so that it can provide for those new species as well.

For example, if you go to Amsterdam one of the most conspicuous bird species that you would see these days is the ring neck parrots. And that one comes from. India. And it's now breeding all over the place and I'm sure it has driven quite a few other bird species, not into extinction, but into dwindling numbers because it occupies their nesting hollows in trees and all that way, but it is the new format of Amsterdam. And that goes for a lot of species. 

So on the one hand, curbing your greed and trying to keep it preserved, what is left, but on the other hand also accept that things have happened and the plot cannot be turned back. If that makes sense. 

Michael Bauman: No, it does. What are some maybe practical things that people can do to help out with that. And I don't know if that's a, you know, your area or your area of expertise, but I'm curious around that. What does that look like?

Hans Van Weerd: Well, it's not my area of expertise. But I do think we as in each industry, Person or households can do a lot of things that accumulated would have an effect and make an impact like one of the things that is really obvious here in this part of the world in Australia is that all the plastic from balloons and all that stuff ends up via currents in the ocean on some of the islands where seabirds die, because they cannot distinguish between what is edible and not edible.. They just go for color in some cases die because they starved because their stomachs are full of plastic. Those are typically things that we all of us can do to to reduce that problem.

So I think it really starts in the household. And I think, you know, at the time. National level we can do more in terms of turning to the other energy sources and all those kinds of things. And perhaps that would have an effect long term And I think that is what we need to do. If we don't do that, if we only look at governments and hope for them to come up with measures, that would have an effect you know, in the next few decades we have to start.

I think that plastic and there's other examples as well. Of course, it's a really good example because it's something you can start doing now. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. So I wanted to transition a little bit, you know, as your life transition, you move to Australia. And then after, you know, a number of years, you decided you wanted to pursue art again, re reawaken that, what was that process like for you? Like how did you come to that decision? And also was there any, you know, kind of apprehension and fears and kind of anxiety around that decision as well?

Hans Van Weerd: Yes, it was. So the reason was, you know, very down to earth. Two and a half years ago in the zoo and an organization that I worked in there was a a restructure as you have any, every so many years, I was a part of a restructure sitting at the other end of the term. A number of times in other zoo organizations, this restructure meant that they the org wanted to have the organization flatter.

And some of the work pushed back to the people that actually did the work. So the layer that I was working in the echelon that I was working in a general manager, in my case the animal sort of related things to get with the similar general managers of visitors and operations that layer was removed. And I was offered a very generous package, which I took. 

And of course there is a lot of apprehension because I had been doing zoo stuff for the past so many years before I worked at a university. Et cetera. But another transition was yeah, was something that was. Difficult to grasp in terms of what the consequences would be. Anyway, I took the generous package, so there was no financial hurry or urge to come up with a new job the next day. 

So I took my time and I even applied for a couple of jobs that were in the same sort of fields roughly, but then I realized That I had been spending a lot of my free time in the past 10 years, because particularly in Australia and particularly in Melbourne and Victoria, the climate is very conducive to the arts and there's lots of possibilities to to make art in studios and all that.

So in those sparse 10 years, I spent a lot of time developing myself as an artist and then I thought, well, maybe that is something that I could pursue. Around a time, somebody alerted me, I think it was a colleague of my wife, to the existence of the OBL organization. The online business liftoff organization run by Trudy Rankin.

So I applied to be part of that. I got accepted and they pushed me through to get it with a lot of other people through. I think it was almost a one year sequence of tutoring in order to, first of all, define your business goal and then how to market your business goal set up your own website and everything that goes with it.

And based on that, I started thinking about, okay, maybe I should try it. Monetize my other passion in the sense that I get to do what I also liked very much, which is making art, but perhaps also make a living out of that. So that's what I did. And the apprehension was of course, that there is a big difference between making art and doing the occasional sales at an exhibition, a group exhibition, and deciding that you really want to make that your primary source of income. 

So I did that and I had to redefine my thinking rather than just drawing and painting, because I like it. I had to come up with a purpose, not only for myself, but also for the people that I wanted to engage.

Once I had that, it started moving into something that looked viable. So, Definition of my art is that I want to help people capture the precious moments in their life because they are fleeting moments. They're here today and can be gone tomorrow. And that could be about themselves. It could be about a loved one.

It could be about the grandchild. It could even be about their garden or the home because they're moving house, all those things that you cherish now, but may not be here again tomorrow. And if you want to have an momento of that, in a more expressive and maybe a more precious way and just another photo on your iPhone. I can help by making an art work around that for them. 

So based on that premise I started developing my own business and I'm not only to stage, but it takes a while. It took me a long while before we launched. Yes. Now it's really taking off. I've had an a art fair in Sydney. And I was there with maybe a hundred other artists from all over Australia. I had a booth there and to my great surprise and joy, I noticed that not only did a sell, but I also was on par with what the others showed. So that gave me a sort of reassurance that it was a good choice. So Yeah. That's what happened. So there was a lot of apprehension initially. 

But then you also start to think in terms of marketing, what I did maybe. Two years ago, one year ago, I thought, okay. I have been a teacher at university. I love teaching. I love my art. Why don't I try to teach my art? So I approach one of these societies. There, there was a member of, I say, Hey, can I do a workshop in the January break, in the summer break and he said, yes, of course. And I did one, I did another. And then he asked me for regular classes and then other arts societies asked me to a regular class. And as it looks now for the next term, starting. The January next year until may or so. I'm fully booked for art classes.

Once you have gained the confidence in your work, that it can be important to other people, then that's where it starts. Is my experience. 

Michael Bauman: So I love that process of you just really defining your one for yourself what you want your art to be, and then also what other people would value and that specific aspect of it being art that captures fleeting moments. Can you talk about the self portrait that you did that kind of ties in with that around art compared to, you know, just taking a photo that we have. So you did two, two different renderings of yourself, and then you had an iPhone in the portrait as well.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I am a great admirer of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele. He was a painter and an artist from the early 19 hundreds. And at the time he was both admired and he was also shunned because what he made was very daring sometimes very sexual drawings or bottles, but one portray that he made a drawing was a double portrait of himself. One looking down the other, looking up and I've always liked it.

And during lockdown, the mood swings you have as many of us had during that period, one is looking a little bit different from the other reflective of the mood and to. You know, the time of today I edit the iPhone because you look at your image in your iPhone.

Maybe you get some some inspiration from that, but that was an essential element in the whole thing, because I-phones were one of the lifelines, I think, with the outside world, but it also meant that was what I got my inspiration from in terms of photos. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. One, because it's like, you know, you do the art and it incorporates that iPhone partially because there is so much part of our life. And as you mentioned, it's a tool that connected us with the outside world. It's a means for capturing things, but then it also is that juxtaposition with what you do, where you're actually taking these moments in.

Creating art with it. It's something that you hang up on your wall and not, it's not saying people don't necessarily hang up their photos, but it's a lot less, it can get lost in just the library of all the different things. So I like that kind of juxtaposition. One hand it's important. It's vital. It serves a purpose.

And then on the other hand, there's an intentionality around creating a specific piece of art. That captures that moment as well. I just thought that was fascinating. 

Hans Van Weerd: Thank you. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah. So the other thing that I wanted to talk about is just how you're the, I mean, your artwork is beautiful and you do a lot of different things, cityscapes in nature and things as well, but really known for your people and your ability to be able to capture people.

So can you talk about some specific instances where you were able to capture. Just at a pretty deep level, what people are exhibiting and even the emotions and stuff behind that. And why that kind of stands out to you and is important to you.

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah. Yeah, I'll try to anyway. Yesterday, or the day before I had one of my last art classes of this term, and we we did a bit of a live drawing and there was a model there in in a studio somewhere. And what I try to convey to the students was that in anything you draw, whether it's a building or even a landscape or an animal but particularly a person it is to try to look for those elements that are most particular to that person, to the person's face to the features.

And once you've called those. Then the work is already half done. Because almost like in a character too, people are looking for those traits that make that person stand out best compared to other people. And once those traits are they're recognizably or exaggerated, as in the caricature, people get that and then the rest can sometimes even be left out.

So that is one to try and look for those things. That are specific to the person. And what I realize is that sometimes you'll even start doing that subconsciously. 

The biggest compliment I received ever was from. Model here in Melbourne she was posing a, in the studio of the Victorian art society here in Melbourne.

And I drew her a quick, as I usually do. And then in the break, she looked at my work and she said, you really captured my mood. It goes, I drew her kind of sad and you know, Introverted and all that. And she said, you captured my mood because this is exactly how I felt. Because two days ago her father had passed away and she was grieving. And she said, you captured my grieving. And I wasn't even aware of that happening to her, but that was the greatest compliment I ever got. 

So I think if you are really trained and you can, everybody can train themselves to. Watch and observe and look at what makes something somebody if you do that often enough, you can also get those underlying things apparently.

And in terms of what that means for a line on the canvas, on the page. It probably just means one little Twitch in a corner of an eye going downwards rather than an upwards or a one corner of the mouth going a little bit further down rub or, you know, all those kinds of things yet you even define precisely, but that would sort of constitute an overall image of the person who is grieving.

So that was just beautiful. That is what I try to do in my work. And that is also what I. Convey to other people. 

And for example, in animals, it translates into if you want to draw a picture of it running cheetah, the essential part is. Draw the head of the cheetah because they, these kept still because it has to keep its eye on its prey and all the rest can be fluid and emotions.

So what you should not do, I believe if you want to convey the speed of the cheetah, accelerating the touch that antelope what you should not do is to precisely draw. Every element of its physiques, including all the paws, as if they're still in frozen. Oh, you should draw them. Maybe not necessarily as you. see them, but as you can imagine, the movement and that is just speed and acceleration and all that. 

Michael Bauman: Yeah, that's really fascinating. I think it's really interesting that aspect of like you talk about. Brings us into the present moment, you know, like you've spent years, your entire life, you know, with a sketchpad, but like capturing things in front of you and you have to have an acute sense of awareness and really develop that.

And art allows us to do that. My father is a photographer and I, you know, dabble in it, but it's interesting. Maybe he's at the Sydney opera house or something like that, and he'll be taking pictures of The Moss that's in the cracks of the ground because of the colors or the lines of it.

And that growing up was really interesting for me to see, 

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah, that's a good example. Well, 

Michael Bauman: like you can catch the richness of life through, through art in, in ways that you can't otherwise. And I think that's really fascinating about what you do.

Hans Van Weerd: Thank you. Thank you. 

Michael Bauman: Absolutely. So, as we wrap up here, you know, I always like asking, you know, you've done a lot of different things in different arenas in life, but I always like asking my guests how would you define success?

Hans Van Weerd: Yeah, like everybody, I think for a long while I have thought of success. Material success in terms of not having worries about finances, having a house of your own and all that kind of stuff. Over the years, having moved from one town to the other I think we have already, we as in my wife and myself, we have already developed a sense of detachment of the material things.

Literally home can be anywhere as long as you're able to get her. And the essential things that are important for you in your life are there. In our case would be me, my art it would be for us, our cats and for my wife would be or history of art stuff. As long as those things are there then life is good.

So there was already a detachment of that. Potential success factor. I think the real success for me now would be to be able to live my, again, I think passion is a bit an overused term, but for want of a better term to live my passion and to do what. Not only like to do, but what I've not come to realize is, and it may sound a bit arrogant that I know I am good at and also to be able to share that with other people and sharing that means to be able to sell my work every now and then, but also to share it in terms of conveying my knowledge to other people as in my art classes.

And I think that has been my most ratifying experience to you that people aren't so, so happy. When somebody shows them the way to. Move on in art and to make art part of their world, and also to use art as a window to the world when the rest of the world is closed off, all those kinds of things.

So success is partly that sort of appreciation materially, but also otherwise of what my passion is. What is also gratifying whether it's going to be successful or not. I'm not sure is to be my own boss. I've never been my own boss. I've always had always worked for others. Now I'm the one who sets the terms and I suffered the consequences when I did not do that correctly, but at least I know it is my doing, and I'm the one makes up my schedule for today, the week or the year. And that is, I considered it a success if it is even if only remotely viable financially in terms of being able to live alone.

Michael Bauman: Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing. So, where can people go? Like if they want to check out your art, do you need to potentially purchase it? Where can they go to do that?

Hans Van Weerd: Yep. So there is my website artonyourwall.com.au it has most of my most recent work, if they're interested and there is an Instagram handle which is @hansvanweerd 

one word lowercase. 

Michael Bauman: yeah. And I'll put links and stuff to that in the show notes. The other question I had is do you ship internationally or is it just locally in Australia?

Hans Van Weerd: I do. I do. 

Michael Bauman: Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So, I really appreciate your time. It's a really fascinating. You've done a lot of interesting things that I was curious about, and I appreciate your perspectives on art and just what you do to capture those fleeting moments. I love it. I think they're really beautiful.

Hans Van Weerd: Thank you, 

Michael Bauman: Absolutely.

Hans Van Weerd: Thank you very much for the opportunity and for having me. And I really enjoyed talking about what I've done because. Well talking, you start thinking about what it is that you actually do. And it always helps to further define, you know, goals and understanding what still needs to be done so thanks for that. 

Michael Bauman: Absolutely. Thanks for taking the time. 

Before you go, I would love it. If you actually just shared this episode with a friend, I'm sure. While you were listening, you know, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy. You just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them.

And chances are, they'll probably like it, too until next time, keep engineering your success. .