Donne Bitner Bio

Donne Bitner is a full-time visual artist and maintains a studio at McRae Art Studios in Orlando.

She graduated with Honors from Pennsylvania State University and studied at the Slade School at the University of London.

Donne taught Beginning and Advanced Watercolor and Acrylic Landscapes at Crealde School of Art for twenty years before retiring recently. She participated in Art Festivals with her husband for twenty years even winning 7 Best of Shows and one which was at Mount Dora’s Art Festival! Donne is a member of the National Watercolor Society, the Florida Watercolor Society and the Watercolor USA Honor Society. She has been published in Acrylic Artist, American Artist, International Artist, Watercolor Magazine and Watercolor Magic. She has been the recipient of many grants and fellowship awards, such as the Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowship, Development Grant from the United Arts of Central Florida and the State of Florida Individual Artist Enhancement Grant. Her work is included in the collections of Huntsville Museum of Art, Springfield Art Museum, Vero Beach Center for the Arts, Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, Rollins College, State of Florida Capital Collection, Holmes Medical Center, A&H Museums – Maitland, and the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, as well as the public collections of the cities of Atlanta, Georgia, and Orlando and Melbourne, Florida.

Janas Smith Durkee Bio

Janas is a visual artist based at McRae Studios in Orlando, Florida. She joined the studio in November 2020 after relocating from Santa Cruz, California. Janas holds a MA in painting from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, which she received in the late 80’s. Throughout her life, Janas has pursued her art practice in diverse ways, including teaching children and adults, building sets for community theaters, creating festival parade floats, renovating houses, and creating decorative furniture. She has also shown her paintings in various venues across the country. Janas’ art practice can be diverse, she usually works with oil paint or “Drawing with ScissorsR” using paper as her medium and scissors as her only drawing tool.

Janas finds inspiration for her art in the colors, light, people, creatures, and machinery of the farm she grew up on in Central Indiana. As a little girl, she had a vivid imagination and would create narratives for each of the farm animals. Her family raised and trained prized hunting dogs, and she had a special love for the family pig Henrietta. Janas takes the sweetness of those fond memories and blends them with her current existence, bringing her two worlds playfully together through expressive brushstrokes and vivid color. Janas and her brothers now own the farm they grew up on.

In addition to her farm-inspired paintings, Janas enjoys creating portraits. She enjoys conversing with her subjects and bringing out something hidden in them. Janas has been in many juried shows over the past 30 years and has been collected by private collectors 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 and was an Eli Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal Fellow in 2005.