Based in Trivandrum, Kerala, Babu Xavier is an artist whose canvases are brought alive with vivid colors and fantastic creatures. His brushes paint on full-blooded reds, vibrant yellows and sparkling blues and greens, creating nearly human figures with some sexual undertones in watercolors that seem to radiate light almost like a prism.

Babu, who was born in 1960, never thought he would grow up to be an artist. In his school and early college days, he claims he couldn't even manage a respectable drawing in any of his science journals. It was only when he was at university, and was sitting scribbling on a newspaper in the library one day, that Babu Xavier realized he could and wanted to paint. Still, Xavie...