A painter whose ties to Moraga Art Gallery reach back more than a decade, Kerima Swain is drawn to a wide range of subjects - the snow-capped peak of Mount Diablo at sunset, rolling hills and city streets, flowers, people, and animals alike. She paints what moves her: scenes with an interesting mood, palette, or composition, and the sense of awe and wonder they stir in her.

She has been drawing since she was a toddler, but growing up in Taiwan - with teacher and engineer parents and a culture that saw an art career as unviable - becoming an artist never crossed her mind. She planned to be a doctor or an engineer. Instead, she found her way to art through the side door: a BA in graphic design, an MA in Art Therapy and Family Therapy, and nearly thirty years as an art therapist and counselor.

Watching art transform her clients reawakened something Kerima had always known in herself. She began creating more of her own work, at first for her own healing and enjoyment. When her children were toddlers, she started evening still-life classes in acrylics and has kept learning ever since through workshops and self-study.

She began exhibiting publicly in group shows in 2006, and after retiring turned her focus to painting. Her work continues to be selected for juried exhibitions across the East Bay, often earning awards. Today she works primarily in oils, though she loves experimenting across mediums.

Much of her inspiration comes from the Bay Area and Northern California, but her travels feed the work too. Her featured show at Moraga Art Gallery, August 19 through October 25, reflects that range. Visitors will find the red lanterns and steep stone steps of Jiufen in her native Taiwan, springtime on a Japanese river in Blossoms and Boats at Arashiyama, and Gondolas in Venice. Her work hovers between representation, impressionism, and abstraction, always reaching for expressiveness. She hopes each painting stirs in viewers the feeling that first inspired it.

Kerima works mostly in her studio, though she also paints en plein air, with colors and light shifting by the minute. Like many artists, she contends with self-doubt, and here her years in art therapy steady her: she returns to self-acceptance, trusting the process and not letting doubt stand in the way. Her advice to aspiring artists flows from the same well: keep making art, and let it hold whatever you bring to it - joy, sorrow, and everything between.

Her hopes ahead are simple: to keep enjoying art making and experimenting with self-acceptance and a sense of freedom.