In the 1960s, she became an active member of the Creative Youth Club Suchasnyk. At the same time, she collaborated with the literary section Brama and joined the circle of the Sixtiers — artists who revived Ukrainian culture during the Khrushchev Thaw.
In 1968, Panchenko enrolled in the evening program at the Faculty of Graphics of the Ivan Fedorov Ukrainian Printing Institute, where she refined her skills in linorite and easel painting.
She worked as a fashion designer at the Design and Technology Institute and the Republican House of Fashion, creating clothing sketches, graphic titles, watercolors, and paintings. Panchenko also organized embroidery workshops, designed national costumes for choirs, and revived Christmas caroling and vertep traditions in Kyiv. In the years of Ukraine’s independence, she openly supported political prisoners and raised funds to help victims of repression.
Panchenko’s art is a synthesis of folk ornament and Sixtiers’ expressiveness: her embroidery, graphics, and paintings are distinguished by concise line, bold color contrasts, and a refined sense of humor. Inspired by folklore and everyday life, she “embroidered joy for herself and her loved ones”, creating new visual codes of Ukrainian culture.
In 2001, Panchenko received the Vasyl Stus Prize for her significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture. In 2008, the National Museum of Literature of Ukraine hosted her anniversary exhibition The Universe of Love, which featured more than 150 works of watercolor, graphics, and appliqué. Other notable exhibitions include Oh My World! at the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Museum in Kyiv (2014) and the retrospective The Universe of Love at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv (2025), which brought together works from private and museum collections.
Panchenko passed away on April 30, 2022, in Kyiv, at the age of 84, after surviving the occupation of Bucha and enduring prolonged starvation. For her civic engagement and dedication to her native city, she was named an Honorary Citizen of Bucha. In 2023, Dmytrova Street in Bucha was renamed in her honor, and in 2025, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative 10-hryvnia coin The World of Couture Art: Liubov Panchenko.
Liubov Panchenko left behind more than five hundred embroidered and graphic works, which continue to inspire artists to experiment with form and national motifs.