Her highly successful third Solo Exhibition at the Harris Courtin Gallery (Oct 2004), coincided with her selection as a finalist in each of three categories in the Fleurieu Prize, South Australia, 2004, just as her second Solo show at this Gallery in May 2003 coincided with her being chosen as a finalist in the Sulman Prize 2003 for her painting "Whistler’s Mother", which was hung in the Prize Exhibition in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

She was also a finalist in: the Hutchins Art Prize, Hobart, 2005; the Cromwell Art Prize, Sydney, 2004; the Biennial Ergon Energy Central Queensland Art Award held by the Rockhampton Art Gallery; the Fleurieu Prize, South Australia,2002; the Toowoomba Biennial Acquisitive Art Award, also in 2002. In 1999 she won the Outstanding Modern Painting Prize at the Courier-Mail Art Show in Brisbane, and in 1996 she was awarded First Prize for Watercolour, at the Paddington Art Festival, Brisbane.

Her commissions have included 10 canvases for Mirvac’s development at Arbour on Grey, at Southbank, Brisbane; a ‘Wheatbix’ Sanitarium TV commercial; a work for First State Development; a ‘Pantene’ TV commercial; for Jennifer Coleman Food Consultant; the Principal Art Prop for a ‘So Good’ Sanitarium TV commercial; the front cover for the Brisbane Visitors Guide, and several works for private collectors. In Brisbane her work hangs in the Wesley Hospital collection, International Organisers, and KP Architects, and in Sydney, at Sydney West International College. Private collections include the UK, USA, Germany, The Netherlands and Australia.

Sylvia’s work exploits the possibilities of colour, ever-changing light and shadow. Her abstracted landscape, figure and still life paintings are constructed surfaces, using shapes and lines found in nature. In her own words: