As the negative valence of human-induced anthropocentric activities has been increasing, simultaneously, ecocentric initiatives aimed at developing environmental consciousness are gaining global attention through advocacy and campaigns. In order to contribute to the global discourse on environmental degradation and climate change, artists have been harnessing the communicative potential of artivism to articulate their perspectives on environmental crises, and bring about a transformative social change by highlighting human-nature connectedness. A testament of such instrumentalization of art at the local grassroots level has been those hundreds of trees adorned with the indigenous Madhubani painting in Mithila region of Bihar in India. A group of fifteen women Madhubani artists have been decorating trees with religio-cultural themes and symbolic motifs of Madhubani painting since 2011 to advocate against ecocidal human activities taking place in and around Madhubani, and promote ecocentric values among Maithili people in order to sustain life in this ecologically sensitive region. This particular initiative has also been supported by social activist Shasthi Nath Jha, who provided essential resources through his NGO—Gram Vikas Parishad. Although integration of the indigenous painting of Mithila with environmental stewardship by women artists as civil actors of environmentalism have effectively deterred people from logging of trees in Madhubani, there remains a research gap in exploring how the culturally rooted art form evolved as an example of environmental artivism. Understanding such local grassroots perspectives would contribute to the global discourse on adopting context-specific practices to combat human-induced environmental crises, while also rekindling the intrinsic human-nature connection embedded in the cultural ethos of diverse communities. Therefore, in order to delve into such local grassroots perspectives from the Mithila region of Bihar, the present study adopts a qualitative-exploratory approach with ethnography as a strategy of inquiry, and non-participant observation and in-depth interviews of stakeholders as tools and techniques of qualitative data collection. Using anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and environmental artivism as conceptual frameworks, the study analyzes the interpretive interactions among the pro-environmental thinking women artists and Maithili people through three themes namely, ritualizing environmental conversation through painting, sacralizing trees through paining, and constructing heritage through painting, which highlight the strategic instrumentalization of Madhubani painting to connect Maithili cultural ethos with environmental stewardship. Moreover, as the status of women in Bihar is relatively low, owing to patriarchal oppression, the study also examines the role of women artists as environmental proponents and documents their journey of empowerment through environmental conservation.