Ashim Purkayastha sees himself as a social activist as much as a painter and captures the trauma and the problems of his home state, Assam, on canvas. In several of his landscapes, Purkayastha uses cut-outs, layering them with three-dimensional compositions that capture the space around them Purkayastha grew up in the oil town of Digboi in Assam, and went on to study art at Santiniketan, where he was a student of the well-known painter Jogen Chowdhury. At Santiniketan, he studied and also painted various folk traditions and did a comparative study of popular art. His works are in all major collections. The artist lives and works in Delhi.