For as long as she can remember Raziya Swan has always known she wanted to be an artist. Despite an exemplary academic career, which included coming top of her class and graduating from Berkeley Institute with honours, she resisted the temptation to do anything but stick to her dream.

"Everybody thought that, with all the GCEs I had, I should be a doctor or a lawyer, and they were shocked to know that I wanted to be an artist,'' Miss Swan remembers. "Graduating from Berkeley was a big struggle for me because I wanted to be an artist, but I also knew I could do science, mathematics or history.'' Her decision made, she enrolled in the Bermuda College where she successfully gained her Diploma in Fine Art with distinction. Next came the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, from which she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in graphic design/illustration.

"Tyler is one of the top ten art schools in the US,'' Miss Swan relates. "It was a wonderful experience. I was surrounded by artists, whom I found very influential, and we had a full library devoted solely to art. The whole art school experience was about growing as an artist, and getting feedback from other people.'' While at the beginning of her degree studies the young Bermudian was particularly interested in graphic art, toward the end her focus leaned towards illustration, and that, she says, is what much of her current one-woman show at the Masterworks Gallery on Bermuda House Lane is all about.

"The technique is called scumbling, which is similar to dry brush painting where there is little paint on the brush. It makes the strokes look soft,'' she explains.

Armed with her BFA, Miss Swan returned to Bermuda filled with desire to begin her career. She knocked on many doors, but none opened, so she was advised to return to the United States and get a teaching degree.

In 1997 she returned to the Island with a Master's degree in Art Education, and landed her first job at CedarBridge Academy. For a tiny young woman with no teaching experience, she faced a baptism of fire.

The school was new, and so were the students to its environment and aspirations. It proved a tough shake-down cruise for everyone.

"It was very challenging, but I was very strict -- that's the key,'' she says.

Today, Miss Swan teaches at both West End and Somerset Primary schools -- assignments she also finds challenging but "a little more satisfying''.

Following her artistic dream "I like to expose the students to as much as I can. A lot of times I think about when I was a child and we didn't have an art teacher,'' she says. "I think about what I know, because in the United States the students have so many places they can visit to learn from. They go to museums every weekend.

"Our children don't know anything about art from different lands and different cultures, so I want to expose them to art in the wide world. I want to advocate art as an important subject.'' Meanwhile, Miss Swan has spent school vacations and most of her spare time over the past six months preparing for her show, which opened last weekend as part of the Masterworks Artists Up Front Street series, and continues through September 8.

It is a mixed-media event which includes prints, pastels, oils and acrylics, as well as basket weaving, etching and papier mache m.

Many of her works are on a large scale, and while some have been inspired by photographs, the finished pieces are all expressions of her own technique.

"Some of the faces are recognisable, and some are friends,'' she says of the portraiture.

Among Miss Swan's stated aims as an artist is the desire "to connect people and engage them in the awe of human experience''.

The strength and power of her images belie the gentle nature of the young woman herself, who admits that she often paints well into the night because she likes quietness.

While art is her career, it is not the sum total of Miss Swan's interests. She is also a keen runner whose love affair with the sport has been "an on-going thing since high school''.

"I don't know what I would do without running,'' she smiles. "It keeps me sane, and gives me an outlet to network with people. I really enjoy running.'' She is also a member of the Bermuda African Dance Company, and has travelled with them to Africa.

"I haven't been dancing lately because I have been concentrating on my art work,'' she confesses, "but I have a drum which I know how to play.''