For more than a decade he has lived in first Stanley, then Beechworth, attracted by the area's visual appeal.

But before that came a long history of achievement as an artist and teacher in his native Adelaide and Melbourne.

On Tuesday Seidel, 88, will open his latest, and potentially last, exhibition in Beechworth's George Kerferd Hotel.

Brian Seidel: Landscapes and Interiors ("I jokingly call it my swansong") has evolved through circumstance and the encouragement of friends.

"I've got a lot of pictures and I decided I'd like to have a show in Beechworth," he said.

"I thought, 'Oh well, let's have a bash, let's have a go'."

The artist said he was looking forward to the event.

“With some trepidation,” he added.

“There always is, because you’re just hoping that people will be interested enough to buy some of the works.”

Seidel remains aware that an artist’s career can be “a tenuous life existence”.

“Every now and then you do sell enough to last for a couple of years,” he said.

Seidel's father was wary of such a calling when his elder son showed promise as a teenager in 1940s Adelaide.

“He just didn’t like the idea of not having a reliable job, which those days was perceived as the public service, either in teaching or other aspects,” Seidel recalled.

“In other words, permanency.”

Seidel’s family, like many, had suffered in the Depression and money was scarce.

“I look back and think how the hell they educated me,” Seidel said.

Yet they did, with Australian painter Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013) proving an inspirational teacher at the then Goodwood Technical High School.

Writing in 1993, Smart believed he couldn’t take much credit for his student’s later success.

“It was obvious, even at that age, that he had an innate sense of composition - something which cannot be taught,” Smart said.

Seidel’s later teachers at art school included Sir Ivor Hele (1912-1993), Australia’s longest serving war artist.

“In the early days, when I first started, naturally you just paint what you see,” Seidel said. “You don’t have a philosophical background about what sort of thing you would paint or create.”

Reading books and art magazines as well as watching mentors guided but did not lead the evolving artist.

“I’ve been a fairly strong personality in the sense that I’m not easily pushed by other people,” he said. “Of course we’re all influenced and I was certainly influenced by those eras, but I never deviated right from the fact that I wanted to paint semi-impressionistically or figuratively.”

“I am activated by people, by situations, by interiors and by just landscapes, by things as I see them. I get moved by them.” 

In the 1950s Seidel combined teaching, family life (he has three daughters), theatre set design, lithographic printing and painting in Adelaide and further afield.

The coming exhibition will include pictures from the Flinders Ranges, “a hunting ground for South Australian artists”.

“Sir Hans Heysen, he went to the Flinders when he was a young artist and that became inspirational,” Seidel said.

“We all go up and paint round about where Sir Hans was.”

Winning the Fulbright Scholarship in 1961 allowed Seidel to study art and art history at Iowa University, joining 150 graduate students from the US and Europe.

Iowa’s weather made an impact, resulting in many paintings based upon snow.

One 1964 work All Winter Long became part of the Commonwealth Collection and was displayed in Australia’s Saigon embassy but was lost or destroyed during the Vietnam War evacuation.

A British Council grant led to lithography study in London before Seidel returned to South Australia to teach, exhibit and review.

His portrait of Professor Keith Hancock was a finalist in the 1965 Archibald Prize, an achievement he repeated 19 years later with a painting of artist Justin O'Brien.

The 1970s brought a move to Melbourne to become the head of the school of art and design at the then Preston Institute of Technology.

Seidel’s biographer Peter Quartermaine said the position demanded a great deal of course development and administration.

“During this decade he transformed a small college in a working class suburb of Melbourne into Australia’s premier college for integrated work in the arts,” Quartermaine wrote in his 1993 book.

Smart also acknowledged Seidel’s great contribution to art education came “at the expense of his private ambitions as a painter”.

Seidel said teaching had been strenuous.

“It was exhausting, intellectually and physically exhausting,” he said.

“You’d teach all day and you’d never do anything in the evening but just go to sleep.”

A full-time artistic career only became possible in the mid-1980s and since then there have been more exhibitions and commissions, with Seidel’s works held in galleries throughout Australia and overseas.

Professor Sasha Grishin wrote in 2003, “Brian Seidel is one of only a few Australian artists who can be accurately described as a modern master”.

Reviewers praised his “decided and vigorously fresh viewpoint” and “lyrical colour”.

At his age, Seidel feels no longer able to deal with all the organising required to put on an exhibition.

But for the last 10 years or so he hasn’t had to, thanks to his studio assistant/secretary Kaye Sheers, a Beechworth resident.

“The word godsend, that’s been Kaye for me,” Seidel said. “She tends to all the detail.”

Ms Sheers said when she learned more about her employer’s background, “I was just in awe”.

“I’m thinking, ‘My goodness, it’s crazy, in this little town called Beechworth, there’s this person here that has done all these sort of things,” she said.

“Now that I know Brian and I know what (artists) go through, how long it actually takes. It’s been a really interesting journey, but I’ve really enjoyed it because it’s just opened my eyes up to a different world that I never had anything to do with before. 

“It’s lovely working in among all these paintings.”

– Additional information provided by Brian Seidel: Landscapes and Interiors, a biography by Peter Quartermaine.

– Brian Seidel: Landscapes and Interiors opens on Tuesday and can be seen until October 23 (excluding Mondays) at Beechworth’s George Kerferd Hotel.