Contemporary painter and print maker Tara Sabharwal was born in New Delhi in 1957 into a Sikh Punjabi family. From 1975-1980 Tara studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda (India) and later, from 1982-1984 at the London Royal College of Art. Since 1976 her work has been included in a variety of shows, following her success at the RCA. During 1984, several Sikh members of Tara's family were murdered in Delhi after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the hands of her Sikh bodyguards. Since then, the artist has moved to New York where she lives and works with her husband and son.

The artist initially used collage and assemblage techniques, utilizing elements from pictures which had been discarded to create new work. Later Tara developed a dreamy yet vibrant pictorial language which used mixed materials such as watercolours, crayon, acrylics, with striking chromatic resonances and built-up effects, that achieve a suggestive quality of intimacy. Tara often uses sweeping strokes and frenetic, choppy gestures to fill the picture plane. Figures are simple and are almost child-like in their scratchy construction.

In her small, two-dimensional works, reminiscent of miniature paintings, Tara's figures can be read ambiguously. Often the same pictorial space contains recognizable objects superimposed on each other: the ridge of a hill also acting as the spine of an animal etc. This is something which also has a precedent in the Indian tradition where one large animal contains within its contours the tessellated forms of many other animals.

The etching 'Life Journeys' has an autobiographical element to it and reflects the relationship between the home and the many different journeys the artist has made. Here, the artist has depicted two homes joined by various paths such as a river, a motorway and a bridge.