Anastasia Markovych, Goddess of the Flaming Dawn

Oil, canvas, 120 x 80 cm, signed p.d.

Surrealist painter from Ukraine, known for her many exhibitions and publications, born in the town of Brychany. In 1990 she started studying at the School of Fine Arts in Chernivtsi, from which she graduated in 1994. In 2009 she began studying at the Faculty of Graphic Arts of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Currently, the artist lives and creates in Poland. She is inspired by the works of Gustav Klimt, an Austrian painter who lived at the turn of the 19th century, and the paintings of Jacek Malczewski. She says this about herself: "From childhood, my brother and I were surrounded by stacks of our parents' various books, conversations about unusual and fantastic things, about the world and the universe, about the place of man and who he really is. All this, step by step, year after year, opened before me the gates to a magical world, to a world of legends, myths, where on earth lived wise and happy people with an extraordinary inner strength of theirs. Their Hearts beat strongly, along with their pure Soul, and their words were not blown away by the wind because they were noble. Nature only surrounded them, for they respected it as they did themselves. There was no fear in their mind, but courage combined with kindness."