Bhuri Bai’s subject of choice was the life of the Bhil community, particularly her childhood memories of Pithol. Her work incorporates songs, rituals, tattoos, folklore, flora and fauna, festivities, dances and village architecture like hutments and granaries. She also integrated diverse palettes and schemes alongside the traditional visual grammar of Pithora painting, such as elongated animal and human forms, elaborate patterns, stippled dots and coiling motifs. As her career took her to more cities in India and abroad, she started painting scenes that included motifs and elements from contemporary urban and industrial society such as buses, cars, aeroplanes and televisions. Today, Bhuri Bai’s style and subject are a culmination of her cultural influences and personal experiences as well as her many experiments with form. She typically does not paint with the conventional vanishing point perspective of Western art, instead implying three-dimensional space solely through strategic vertical and horizontal placement, regardless of proportions. 

Among her most renowned works are her murals on the 70-feet high wall at the Madhya Pradesh State Tribal Museum, where she narrates the story of her own life. She is also trained in hut-making, a practice she learnt from her mother Jhabbu Bai. She was also involved in the construction of the Bhil hut in the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal. Together with Lado Bai, she worked on a few paintings which were photographed by Jyoti Bhatt in 1983 and later published in Jagdish Swaminathan’s book The Perceiving Fingers (1987).

Bhuri Bai’s work has been extensively exhibited in museums and galleries within India, as well as Europe, Australia and the United States. She has exhibited with institutions such as  the Culture Ministry of India; the National Crafts Museum & Hastkala Academy, New Delhi; Pundole’s Gallery, Mumbai; Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA), Kolkata; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; and Maison Guerlain, Paris. Her work has been showcased at landmark exhibitions such as Now That the Trees Have Spoken at Pundole’s Gallery in 2009; Other Masters of India at Musée du Quai Branly, curated by Jyotindra Jain and Jean-Pierre Mohen (2010); and the second iteration of Vernacular in the Contemporary curated by Jackfruit Research and Design led by Annapurna Garimella (2010). A comprehensive virtual exhibition of her work, Bhuri Bai: My Life as an Artist, was organised by the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru in 2020.

In 1986, the Government of Madhya Pradesh awarded her with the Shikhar Samman, followed by the Devi Ahilya Samman in 1998 the Rani Durgavati Award in 2009. In 1999, she accompanied Pardhan artist Jangarh Singh Shyam in a presidential delegation to an art workshop in Australia organised with aboriginal artists such as Kathy Marawila and Djambawa Marawila. Her recognitions led to her appointment as resident artist at the Adivasi Lok Kala Academy, Madhya Pradesh in 2002. In addition to rendering Pithora paintings on paper, canvas, wood, mud pots and textiles, she has also illustrated books such as Bhili Kathayein 2005) and Bhil Janjateeya Geet (2006). She was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India in 2021.  

At the time of writing, Bhuri Bai lives and works in Bhopal, where she is resident artist at the Madhya Pradesh Tribal Museum.