Tanurima Dhar was born and brought up in an interior village of Murshidabad district, sans electricity, sans tar roads. She was surrounded the bullock and horse carts. When she was a child Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder’s Thakumar Jhuli, Abanindranath Thakur’s Kheerer Putul, Rabindranath Thakur’s Breepurus, and Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol were frequently read out to her by her mother under the dim lamp light every night. And with those stories, the play of shadows on the wall took her to the world of the stories and its interwoven animated characteristics. That was the beginning of her journey into the world of visual arts. She mentions how their kitchen fuel at that time was a chulha, which left a collection of soot on the wall behind. This became the source of all the colour she could possibly imagine as a child. She spent a large part of her childhood embracing ‘Sohaj Path’, not knowing the artist who coloured her imaginit. It was much later that she shed all its colour source to Mastermoshai Nandalal Bose. She recollects an occasion when she was reading the poetry ‘Chayar Ghumato Mukha Taeni’ and saw the family across the road lining their paths with cow-dung. The relatability of the activity with the poetry she was reading, the rhythms that she observed on those walls became the onset of the deep friendship she had to the texts and images of Sohaj Path.

Her parents were greatly inclined towards the pedagogical environment that had been forming in Santiniketan. Hence, she was enrolled in Path Bhavana. In the magnanimous room at Santoshashalaya (hostel), where she grew up, the walls were covered with paintings, which lit in front of her eyes every time. They were like dreams. It was also when she grew up to observe her brothers and sisters seated all day on the floor and studying the murals, she recollects this day when her Onker Dada (mathematics teacher) crossed out all the sums solutions from her notebook and commented that even though all the calculations were wrong, her drawings all over the notebook, copies from the Santhoshashalaya murals, were quite commendable.

Art has been Tanurima’s companion since then, and till date she has painted numerous paintings and exhibited her artworks in five solo exhibitions, and several group exhibitions and workshops.