Tanushree Sarkar has had a special ‘biryani’ cooking for the last four-five years and it helps that the Jamshedpur girl, an acclaimed and award-winning art director of films like Parineeta, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag and Eklavya, has immense hunger. The hunger to learn that saw her leave for Mumbai almost three decades back, savour the world of ads and films, only to come back to a city after her heart — Calcutta — six years later, and finding her calling. Art.

What’s your Calcutta connect?

I am from Jamshedpur but Calcutta has been like a second home because if you are a Bengali, you have to have super Calcutta connections. You can put me anywhere here and I will paint. When I landed, something told me, ‘This is it!’ I am so passionate about this city that I can die here. There is a lot of peace here. Life is so simple and beautiful. That is my biggest inspiration. There will always be colour. I don’t want the darkness to be so dark that people will think manush ta khub gombhir. Manush ta gombhir noi. We all just have layers.

My parents are here now. I came to Calcutta after six years, mid-February, to visit my parents. I wanted to feel the winters and then the lockdown happened. I was meant to go back and decided not to.

Tanushree Sarkar. Sourced by The Telegraph

You studied art…

I am a pure artist. Post my XII, I have done everything related to art. I have been in Mumbai post my 12th.

Parineeta was your big break in Hindi films…

Parineeta also had a journey. I think that particular part of my life is most important because every bit of my art travel in different media has helped me to be where I am today or has given me the vision to paint my canvas. I have done commercial art (from Nirmala Niketan College) and there are a lot of techniques that you learn, like calligraphy, typography, illustration, optical illusion art. I was in love with Letraset, which is why I did my screen printing from Sophia Polytechnic. I also studied textiles there. All this were to make my mind very sound for illustration in advertising. I had a knack for advertising.

As a kid also, I have been very interested in colours and oil painting. The exposure to fine arts was probably not so much for me, though I knew that I was doing a lot of still painting and oil painting. Bombay was a leap. I always wanted to go there. My parents have been very supportive.

My journey of life in terms of art, media, exposure, films, cinema began at Ogilvy & Mather. It was an institute. I was there for about four years. Ad shoots fascinated me. Of course I am a cinema fanatic, but one doesn’t know what are you fanatic about. I didn’t have the knowledge or exposure in the different departments even in that. I wanted to learn and figured out the word is art direction. I was in touch with Pradeep Sarkar and he said he was opening a production house and asked me to join him. Nothing like having a live experience of your life. That was the first huge step. It seems simple but it isn’t.

Artwork by Tanushree Sarkar. Sourced by The Telegraph

And, then you wanted to give it all up one day…

As I progressed in life, I felt my art was going backwards. It varies from person to person. I wasn’t okay with it any more. I lost the zeal of going and sketching. After Gabbar, I decided not to do any more films, which was three-four years back. I thought of doing only ads and a lot of live event shows which gave me the scope to do installations. The art started getting more polished. I had the lovely opportunity to work with Sabyasachi (Mukherjee) a lot. A 100x100 ft set became a canvas for me.

For the last two years, I have been participating in the Indian Art Fair which happens at the Nehru Centre. I had picked up my brush after 14 years or more. While I was putting up the sets simultaneously and painting, this gave me more satisfaction. I am on the top of my world. There is no turning back. I do oil and acrylic, but right now, I am doing a mixed media, which is a contemporary form of watercolour, wax crayons and colour pencils. I am trying this on handmade paper. It is a world that I am creating. I pretty much exist in my present. Right now I am building my canvas. It plays heavily on Indian history and culture. I am marrying the lens of cinema and my eyes and trying something different and that for me is the beginning.