"It has not been anything else but only to observe and investigate myself within a formal context. When I look back into my earlier years, all I remember is it was drawing and coloring that gave me delight in an unknown way. It has not changed any bit but with longer experience I do know now there are others quite the same and as in harmony with their inner being when it comes to the business of making art."
Born in Assam, India of Indian parents, Piyali Sen Dasgupta grew up on a remote tea plantation and because of this shares a deep underlying dependence on and bondage with all that is organic and natural. A Fine Arts graduate of Santiniketan, Viswa Bharati University in West Bengal, India, Piyali was awarded a cultural scholarship from the Government of India in 1976 and was mentored in printmaking by Somnath Hore from 1976-1977. Her upbringing and education in Santiniketan, the heart of Tagorian philosophy and aesthetic, enhances her perspective on humanity. Since 1980, Piyali has lived mostly in Houston, Texas. She prefers egg tempera in painting on a combined surface of rice and brown paper and other mediums. As an artist, her work is that of a woman defining herself in terms of her spirituality and love of nature. More recently, she has travelled extensively from her home in Houston, visiting weavers in Paithan, Maharashtra and the Weaver's Studio of Ms. Darshan Shah in Kolkata to understand recent movements in textiles taking place in India.