Looking for a theme with category excerpts

Hello,
I am newish to WP and have been having a hard time finding a theme that is truly easy to be creative with in a design sense without a geeky approach. I have tried the usual free popular ones, Suffusion, Platform, Headway…to no avail. I can’t find anything yet that allows the freedom with graphic design that Blogger does. But the private paid membership blog I want to create seems to be only possible to do at WP.

So I am now looking for a theme that is minimal and elegant, allows for much customization…drag and drop would be ideal. I have spent hours and hours looking and one thing that confuses me is whether a theme has to specifically show category excerpts (photo from most recent blog post, perhaps a bit of text) to be able to have them, or if that is something that can be added with a plugin? I’ve wondered if the magazine-style themes that I see with the boxes at the bottom (sometimes it seems to be a portfolio?) can be category excerpt-type links?

It should all be clear after all the hours of research I have done, but it isn’t and I would appreciate any advice.