Syra is a contemporary figurative artist who is inspired by both thepresent and the past.
She works in a flexible style using paint as amultilingual language to construct a visual world  where a kaleidoscopeof colour and emotion link to form a symbolic narrative.

Syra studied Art at Hammersmith College of Art London and qualified withmerit in 1972. She  moved to Ireland with luthier husband Chris Larkinin 1977, where they settled on the Maharee Peninsula, in Co. Kerry.

Their lives and careers are closely interwoven and both act as aspringboard creatively to each other. Chris hand builds guitars, Syrapaints. Chris’s starting point is a block of wood, Syra’s is a canvasand pigment. It is important to both of them that whatever they build or create has a strong underlying structure.

"When I start a painting I often have a very simple idea or emotion in my head - maybe just the way some one holds their head, a bird flying in the garden, a fleeting moment of love or sadness - simple but complicated emotions which are universal to each human being, although we all have our own unique way of expressing them.

But what ever initial idea or emotion triggered the flow of paint,( the splitting of the timber) The paintings should have an underlying balance between line and colour that enable them to work visually.”

Syra has taken part in many of the major open submission exhibitions andhas had work in both solo and group exhibition in Ireland, America, Spain, Italy and England.

Syra was nominated by the Internal Commitee of the Florence Biennale to be one of the artist to represent Ireland and exhibit in the Fifth Annual International Biennale of Contempoary Art 2005. which took place in the
exhibition space of the historic Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy.

Her work can be found in both private and corporate collections.