ON a rough back-of-the-canvas calculation, Bungendore Fine Art gallery has sold more than one painting every day in the decade since it opened.
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"Everyone exhibited has sold and not every gallery can say that," said Beth Monahan, one of the current artists and a driving force behind the enterprise these days.
Ten years on, the gallery is hanging its 10 most popular past painters as guest exhibitors, during anniversary celebrations in July and August.
A cake and mulled wine party at the gallery on Saturday, July 4 will formally mark a commercially successful decade since the original group found and converted a doctor's surgery and bookshop on Ellendon Street.
In 2005 these mostly Canberra painters supplied commercial galleries and exhibited at art shows but agreed having a hanging wall each in their own new space was an attractive business plan.
"Today, as they did then, we sell paintings in a venue we own and manage, continuing to paint while we balance our rosters as sales staff," said another of the current partners, Ray Barnett.
Mrs Monahan agrees with Mr Barnett's conservative estimate that the gallery has sold between 4000 and 5000 paintings and 14,000 art cards of predominantly Australian subjects to overseas, interstate and local buyers.
Original partners on opening day, July 3, 2005 were Ann Hand, Colleen Connors, Robyn Weare, Pamela Phillips, Robyn Power, the late Jane Mitchell, Ray Barnett, Diane Alder and Terry Davys.
Barnett, Alder and Davys remain, now joined by Beth Monahan, Sue Grieves, Val Le Maitre, Janette McGuffog and Jenny Becker. The guest anniversary exhibitors are six local Canberra painters, with others from Adelaide, Queensland, Kiama, Goulburn, all familiar to local art lovers and some fans who are expected to return from Sydney and Victoria.