Bhuri Bai of Pitol was the first Bhil artist to use paper and canvas for her painting. She had come to Bhopal as a construction worker. J. Swaminathan, the then Director of Bharat Bhawan, asked her to paint on a paper. Bhuri Bai began her journey as a contemporary Bhil artist and developed her own style. Bhuri Bai painted her family’s ancestral horse and was thrilled to see the effect of the poster colour as it touched the white paper. “In the village, we had to work so hard to extract colour from plants and clay.