Jayashree Chakravarty was born in Khoai in Tripura in 1956, but grew up in a developing suburb of Kolkata. Witnessing the lush green landscape of her childhood give way to a grey mass of concrete would later influence her work, which often addresses old and new cityscapes. Describing her work as autobiographical and dreamlike, Chakravarty crafts her own unique idiom to express ideas of truth, nature, and unity. She often experiments with organic materials, paper, rice paper, tissue, and cellophane creating fluid and transparent images that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.

The artist completed her bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, in 1978, and received a postgraduate diploma from M S University, Vadodara, in 1980. In 1993, she migrated to France, where she worked as an artist in residence in Aix-en-Provence for two years, where she came across and was influenced by the French art movement Supports/Surfaces, and the work of painter Claude Viallat.

In her works, Chakravarty uses superimposed forms, similar to sketches that cave painters worked on before they mapped them on the walls of caves. She believes that relating to human beings of a distant country and a different culture expanded the horizons of her imagination, and forced certain pre-conceived images to change. Chakravarty’s ink on paper sketches are an exercise in transforming personal experience into mystical truth.

Chakravarty has exhibited her work at museums and galleries across the world. Her works also form a part of the permanent collection at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and the Chandigarh Museum. Chakravarty lives and works in Kolkata