Janas is a visual artist based at McRae Studios in Orlando, Florida. She joined the studioin November 2020 after relocating from Santa Cruz, California. Janas holds an MA inpainting from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, which she received in the late 80s.Throughout her life, Janas has pursued her art practice in diverse ways, includingteaching children and adults, building sets for community theaters, creating festivalparade floats, renovating houses, and creating decorative furniture. She has also shownher paintings in various venues across the country. Janas' art practice can be diverse, sheusually works with oil paint or “Drawing with Scissors ®” using paper as her mediumand scissors as her only drawing tool.Janas finds inspiration for her art in the colors, light, people, creatures, and machinery ofthe farm she grew up on in Central Indiana. As a little girl, she had a vivid imaginationand would create narratives for each of the farm animals. Her family raised and trainedprized hunting dogs, and she had a special love for the family pig Henrietta. Janas takesthe sweetness of those fond memories and blends them with her current existence,bringing her two worlds playfully together through expressive brushstrokes and vividcolor. Janas and her brothers now own the farm they grew up on.In addition to her farm-inspired paintings, Janas enjoys creating portraits. She enjoysconversing with her subjects and bringing out something hidden in them. Janas hasbeen in many juried shows over the past 30 years and has been collected by privatecollectors in many states, including Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, North Carolina,South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oregon, Washington, California, Minnesota,Arizona, Massachusetts, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. She has won awards for her work andwas an Eli Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal Fellow in 2005.