Strolling past the immensely popular Art Plaza in South Bombay one sunny afternoon in November a motley collection of paintings caught my eye - Derek Monteiro's Moksha Moments - an exhibition of mixed-media portraits, and his attempt to find a clue to inner existence. A search for truth.

The call of art beckoned Derek earlier on in life, and he even bid farewell to a career in physics at IIT, due to idealistic reasons, to pursue his first love. Of art.

So, here is an artist with a powerful sense of vision. Having begun with water colours when he was just six

years old, Derek today, 27 years later, is completely at ease with a variety of colour media, including oil, oil pastels, ink, and multi-media collages.

Intuitively, he accepts reality as metaphysical and expresses artistic ideas using form as an optical illusion. Most of his present work is composed of a series of strong line drawings filled with vivid colours. He describes his art as "tapping the marvellous" with 'marvelism' being his style.

Derek welcomes commissioned work based on his drawings - be they landscapes, murals or even icons. His next exhibition, Thought Tapestries, comes up at the British Council Gallery in Bombay from December 13-17, 1993.