Lado Bai (b. 1954) was born in Badi Bawadi village, Jhabua district, Madhya Pradesh, into the Bhil community. She began painting in childhood and later worked as a construction labourer at Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, where her wall and floor paintings were noticed by J. Swaminathan, who encouraged her to move onto paper and canvas.

Her work is marked by restraint and symmetry, animals and trees rendered through fine, repeated striping that gives each form a woven, tactile density. Open ground is used deliberately, allowing space itself to hold weight within the composition, while colour moves across the surface like a connecting thread, binding animal, branch, and bird into a single, balanced order.

Working within the Bhil tradition, she treats pattern not as decoration but as the means through which form and meaning come into being. She lives and works at the Adivasi Lok Kala Academy in Bhopal, and received the Ojas Art Award in 2017.