Mr Odello Painting

Syra Larkin was born in England. She moved to Ireland with husband Luthier Chris Larkin in 1977, where they settled on the Maharee Peninsula, Co. Kerry. Chris and Syra along with their three children spent the first four and a half years on the Maharees in a blue caravan, not a dwelling or a lifestyle very conducive to painting, but thoughts of painting were always close at hand in the shape of a drawing pad and a watercolour box. The caravan eventually became Syras first studio once the family had moved out and into a more concrete environment. In 1999 Syra and Chris moved into a purpose built workshop and studio. The caravan now resides beside the house, an emotional reminder of their start to life and respective careers in Ireland.Syra is a contemporary figurative artist who is inspired by both the present and the past. She works in a flexible style using paint as a multilingual language to construct a visual world where a kaleidoscope of colour and emotion link to form a symbolic narrative.."When people ask me about my work I often feel at a loss to put into words what I do. I feel that in some way everybody wants to tie you up into a neat package which can be easily understood but like most things in life it is often not easy to explain or understand the things we do. I feel that my work is a genuine response to my own existence -the things that I respond to and in some way relate to. When I see a dance performance I wonder how the dancers remember all the steps,gestures and facial expressions they must memorise yet dancers dance asif they are hardly conscious of what they are doing . They seem to enter a different time and space. This is what the audience comes to share and experience. I hope that when a person views my work they too can share a different time and space.Not one that in any sense needs an explanation - it is just a place where I create, like the dancer, a slightly altered perception of the world, one that can to some degree help to heighten the viewer's own visual perception of the world "