A visit to the office of Gadens in Brisbane’s CBD is a little like visiting an art gallery.

You step out of the lift and the first thing you notice is the art. Executive Chairman of the firm’s Brisbane office, Paul Spiro, takes me on a brief tour with all the aplomb of the director of an art museum. While the Gadens offices are anything but a museum they do resemble a gallery with impressive art around every corner.

“We’re showing works by some of the Brisbane Portrait Prize’s Next Gen artists finalists right now,” Spiro explains and as we stroll he points out that “we have named our meeting rooms after female artists.”

There’s the Tracey Moffatt Room, the Daphne Mayor Room, Sally Gabori Room and so it goes. Nice.

Paul Spiro is immensely proud of Gadens’ engagement with the arts, the visual arts in particular.

But our tour is bittersweet because as of Friday September 29 he will leave his current position and step down as a partner in the respected firm. This is significant considering Spiro is one the most respected business leaders in Queensland and a major supporter of the arts in general – including as a foundation partner of InQueensland and more recently, of Queensland’s new arts dedicated site InReview.

Gadens is legal firm, he’s one of Australia’s leading experts in property law, commercial negotiation and facilitation and has been heavily involved in the Brisbane business community for decades currently serving as Chairman of the Brisbane Economic Development Agency, a position he will retain.

But he will now only occasionally be turning up at Gadens’ swish Eagle Street offices where the view is as impressive as the art.

“I will stay on as a consultant though,” Spiro explains over coffee downstairs. “I have been here 36 years starting in late 1987 and I’m the only one left from that time. I have been a partner since 1988 and managing partner since 2000. It’s a long-haul and you have to know when it’s time to do something different.”

Like Rupert Murdoch and Dan Andrews, I suggest and he laughs, shaking his head in the process.

No, he will, like Sinatra, be doing it his way. It will give him more time with his family – wife Naoko and young daughters Kaede, 13 and Yuri, 15 (Spiro also has two adult children from a previous marriage – Elly, 31, Zach, 30). It’s a bilingual household.

“My wife is Japanese and our daughters only speak to their mother in Japanese,” Spiro says. “I don’t speak any Japanese which makes it interesting. I can say beer. Biru.”

It’s a start.

Spiro, 64, is a Brisbane boy, grew up at Fairfield, went to Yeronga State School and Brisbane Grammar School where he excelled at sport, swimming in particular. Spiro is tall and fit and looks every inch the swimmer and when we meet, I can’t help thinking of those swimming sensations the Mean Machine.

“When I was young my whole focus was sport,” he says. “I swam a lot and quite successfully. I was Queensland state breaststroke champion for many years, won an Australian title and swam in the Olympic trials but didn’t make it. I didn’t have much exposure to arts and culture.”

His engagement with the arts more broadly came when he went to Festival Hall where his father John worked as an accountant.

As a young fellow Spiro saw everything from Bob Marley and The Wailers to World Championship Wrestling at Festival Hall. It was a broad education.

Studying Arts / Laws at UQ he was still mainly sport oriented at uni.

Which begs the question: I ask if there was an epiphany, a moment that inspired his interest in the arts?

Because over the past few decades he has become more and more involved and Spiro recently served as chair of Brisbane Festival for five years. That put him at the centre of our cultural life.

But what about that epiphany?

“My epiphany was starting work at Gadens,” Spiro says. “Gadens in Sydney were very supportive of the arts and when they opened an office in Brisbane, they brought that philosophy with them.

“When I started at Gadens I was exposed to that and I loved it. My passion just grew from there.”

The company now has a collection of more than 200 works including ground breaking Queensland artists such as Jenny Watson, Natalya Hughes and more recently Gerwyn Davies, among others.

Spiro has led the Gadens team on a journey of adventure into the visual arts in particular. He has served on the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) foundation and instigated the firms’ relationship with the Museum of Brisbane in 2014 as the inaugural partner.

His passion for art led him to found Spiro Grace Art Rooms (SGAR) a small commercial gallery in Spring Hill that aimed to build audiences for contemporary Australian artists.

He worked closely with artists and gallery director Renai Grace who went on to serve as director of the Museum of Brisbane until recently. Being part owner of a gallery was a revelation and deepened his understanding.

More recently Gadens has supported the exhibition Gone Fishing which is on at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until January. It explores the relationship between First Nations artists and their environment, the sea in particular.

Gadens now substantial art collection that focuses on emerging and mid-tier artists.

“We love art and we talk about art all the time in the office,” Spiro says. “It’s in our DNA. We’re not fair-weather friends with the arts. We’ve been involved since the 1980s and we are still involved. Sometimes the economy goes down and people walk away. We never walk away.”

The law has been Paul Spiro’s career and it will remain so for some years to come in a different way. His interest in the arts and visual art in particular has been integral to that career.

“You have to have something different in your life,” he says. “Art is Gadens’ point of difference in an increasingly homogenized world. We are known as the lawyers who support the arts.”

That won’t change. What will is that he will now have more time for other interests including, importantly, riding his two motorbikes – one Honda Africa Twin 1100 and a Husqvarna 701 Both are Enduro/ Adventure motorcycles.. He’s a serious rider and is planning new journeys including overseas adventures. He has traversed vast tracts of the Outback and has ridden in a number of countries and now has Ecuador and Vietnam, among others.

He will also visit Gadens’ Philippines office in December to finalize the curation of the art in the office there and importantly, to attend the Christmas party as his “swan song”.

Spiro was honored at a Town Hall meeting at Gadens the day we met but he isn’t expecting a big send off, because he will be back in his new role as a consultant from time to time.

“When I leave, I will just shake hands with the partners and that’s it,” he says. “I don’t want too much Hoo ha.” Mind you he deserves some.