Semykina survived war, two famines, and basements. She studied at the Odesa Art School and the Kyiv State Art Institute. Her diploma work Port was deemed “ideologically incorrect” just months before her defense — and she had urgently to create a Group Portrait of the Old Bolshevik-Arsenalists. She worked in easel and monumental painting, creating landscapes, still life, and genre paintings, including works on labor themes.

In 1962, together with like-minded colleagues from the Creative Youth Club — Alla Horska and Viktor Zaretsky — Semykina raised concerns about the unsatisfactory state of the Ukrainian language and culture in the Ukrainian SSR. Around this time, she became interested in the ancient history of Kyiv, which led to her painting Legend of Kyiv.

In 1964, the stained-glass work Shevchenko. Mother, created by Semykina along with Alla Horska, Opanas Zalyvakha, Halyna Sevryk, and Halyna Zubchenko, was installed at Kyiv University for the 150th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth. The authorities deemed it “ideologically corrupt, giving a distorted image of Taras Shevchenko” and destroyed it before the opening. Semykina was expelled from the Union of Artists and deprived of opportunities to work, because the orders were only available to members of the Union. She turned to fashion design, creating and sewing clothing inspired by Ukrainian traditions for dissidents, learning their life stories and relieving tension through her work. Semykina dreamed a different state and social order, and her designs were an expression of that dream.

Meanwhile, official authorities continued to harass her, confiscating her home and studio, and she felt she “was on the brink of Vorkuta”. She was rescued by Leonid Osyka, who offered her work designing costumes for the film Zakhar Berkut. She got excited about designing historical costume — and it resulted in series such as Scythian Steppe, Polissya Legend, Princes’ Era, Retro, and Modern.

During her 20-year professional hiatus, aside from theater and film costume work, Semykina created filmstrips and completed several monumental works in Kyiv, including the 1980 decoration of the Petrovka metro station (now Pochaina). She was reinstated in the Union of Artists in 1988 “in the absence of charges”.

In recognition of her outstanding contribution to 20th-century progress, the American Biographical Institute and the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge included her biography in the 1997 edition of Lives of the Famous.