Lana Matskiv, née Svetlana Galkin, is a Ukrainian-born Canadian artist and an exhibiting member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the Portrait Society of Canada. Her fascination with art began early, and she studied structural drawing and academic painting in Ukraine, both at a Youth School for the Arts and under private instruction. She immigrated to Canada in 1991 and completed her MA at the University of Toronto in 1993. After a successful career in the legal field she walked away from it to dedicate her time and energy to painting, starting again with foundation courses at George Brown College before honing her craft at the Toronto Academy of Realist Art under Fernando Freitas, Estevan Rodriguez and Miriam Rosenthal. Over the past decade she has shown her work in Canada, the United States, Hungary and Ukraine, and has received a number of awards in prestigious international competitions. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Ukrainian-Canadian Art Foundation, the Shevchenko Museum of Toronto, the Black Mecca Museum of Chatham-Kent, and the municipal art collection of the city of Chatham. She works in figurative art with mystical and symbolist overtones, while strictly abiding by the power of realism.