Born in 1958, Jaya Ganguly graduated from the Indian College of Art, Calcutta in 1980. Jaya currently works in figurative expressions. Her works depict dream images which border on the grotesque but are mysteriously beautiful. The figures are surreal, distorted, and express a certain inner torment. Jaya does not like verbalising her creative exercise. In her early creative expressions of the nineteen eighties she was greatly inspired by the creative and destructive forces of Goddess Kali and her world around Kalighat. She spent much of her childhood in the vicinity of the famous Kali Temple of Kolkata.

“In my early paintings, the Mother Kali would appear sometimes as a person or the most ordinary women would resemble HER – and even parody HER divine gestures” says Jaya. However, with passing of time and with personal tragedies impinging on her life, Jaya changed as a person. “… the movement is away from emotional chaos to a balanced cosmos. Colours can still splinter, group and bond as sub-particles to create shapes that finally assume significance of form” feels Jaya. She has participated in several prestigious projects in India and abroad.