Ladoo Bai, who is in her late 50s, was identified as a potential artist by J Swaminathan during his research tours through the tribal districts of Madhya Pradesh. She packs her paintings densely, encrypting them with trees and animals, some of which have a symbolic significance. Among these, she fits in occasional human beings who have been scaled down in relation to nature, although they are hunters and cultivators who could bring down the edifice of the natural with a few cataclysmic gestures.
Ladoo Bai develops her figures as if through layers of embroidery: sometimes, she allows the trailing branches of a tree to form a partial border around her ensemble of motifs. She revels in a dynamic asymmetry between details that are refined to completion, and details deliberately left brushy and unfinished. Many of her paintings are composed around a dance of stags and antelopes, tree goddesses and herons, snakes and hunters, turtles and riders.