SWISS artist Djamila Liniger Strauss has a million stories to tell.

The 67-year-old has visited and lived in more countries than she can readily remember, at last count, she was at nearly 30 countries and on every continent.

Born in Munich, Germany, to an Algerian father and German mother, Strauss was exposed to and influenced by European and African arts and cultures. She began her extensive travels from a tender age.

Add to that a 30-year passionate love affair with Jamaica.

It is this smorgasbord of ideas and images which have come pouring out in her art — paintings and drawings — for the past nearly 50 years.

“The first time I visited Jamaica I had an incredible experience getting here. On the plane from Munich to New York, I was just crying and shaking and this continued on the flight from New York to Jamaica. Once I got here, it all stopped and then I knew I was meant to be in this place,” she says.

She explains further that she had a vision in which the Queen of Sheba explained to her that she would find a place where she is at peace and when she arrived in Jamaica she truly “overstand” what the vision meant.

All these experiences come to life on canvas and paper in her latest exhibition, Hidden Treasures, which is now hanging in the gallery at the RedBones Blues Café in St Andrew.

This is her 129th exhibition and she has shown her work in 30 different countries.

The pieces cover a range of topics with ever-present motifs of Africa and the Caribbean.

Strauss sees herself as a bridge-builder, forging connections and relations between countries, cultures and religions.

“Art is my life, but I am more than just an artist, I am halfsocial worker as I care deeply about children who I want to teach and help them through my art,” she said.

The current exhibition captures moment of her meeting with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I as a 10-year-old in Munich; glimpses Jamaican culture in a piece dedicated to reggae artiste Gregory Isaacs and renowned intuitive artist Malika ‘Kapo’ Reynolds; her years in the African desert and her conversion from a Catholic upbringing to Islam.

There are aspects of Strauss’s life and work which she guards closely, promising to reveal when she pens her autobiography and catalogue.

In the meantime, she continues to offer snippets of her life and travels through her art.