From her childhood growing up in Gippsland, Lanfranchi was a gifted illustrator, despite never studying art outside of school.

“I always drew,” she laughs. “My art teachers at school always told me I was really good. It was my best subject. I wasn’t too good at the others.”

Lanfranchi joined the DVAS when she moved to the area with her husband and two young children 35 years ago. The artistic activity proved healing when, soon after the move, her husband died at the age of 42.

“I was lucky I was already painting. I threw myself into my painting,” she says.

Now aged in her 70s, Lanfranchi is the society’s president and one of the group’s longest-standing members.

The society was established more than 40 years ago when a group of artists began meeting at a Greensborough cafe in 1972.

‘‘When I first joined, it was run in a very, very old building in Sherbourne Road in Briar Hill. When they had shows there, they would put down bales of hay to sit on and had mulled wine,’’ Lanfranchi recalls.

The group moved into Oldstead Cottage in Greensborough in 1978 and then Greensborough Primary School in 1980, where they remained for 20 years before moving into their current home at Greensborough Secondary College.

Today, the group has more than 120 members who work across a variety of art forms.

Their current exhibition Art In Diversity features more than 60 works, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, sculptures and pottery.

Such exhibitions give budding artists a chance to sell their work, Lanfranchi says.

The group is open to everyone from amateur artists to seasoned artists who want to go on to be professionals.

For many of its members, the group is a kind of artistic community. ‘‘I think a lot of people go there for the company,’’ Lanfranchi says.

“I’ve made some really nice friends in the society over the years.”