Danelle Bergstrom JF-S transposition

‘JF-S transposition is about John Firth-Smith, an Australian painter who has an energetic and enthusiastic view of the visual world,’ says Danelle Bergstrom.

Asked about her portrait she recalls an old mirror on the kitchen table, Firth-Smith leaning over it, and the idea for a new painting, full of reflected shapes and forms, weights and surfaces, suddenly emerging.

‘I then realised this idea also mirrored a way of thinking that John often expresses: ever questioning normal preconceptions, challenging the real and apparently real, changing the natural order without changing its true value,’ she says.

There are slight variations between the two canvases. ‘Reversing one became important,’ she says, ‘in reinforcing the notion of opposites, change and reflection created by the mirror itself.’ It was also important in terms of the composition and design of the portrait in which ovals and the figure eight (the infinity symbol) are repeated many times.

Artist/lecturer Danelle Bergstrom was born in Sydney in 1957. She studied at the Julian Ashton School from 1974 to 1979 then completed a Bachelor of Art Education at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in 1980. She has since taught extensively.