Janie is part of Clarity Haynes’s longstanding Breast Portrait Project, which had its beginnings in 1998 and continues to the present. The artist intended the series of drawings and paintings to create both a space for healing and a collective history. Each subject poses for a portrait of her torso and also writes about the experience. As Haynes has stated, “I think of my portraits as a cultural intervention—‘before’ pictures lovingly drawn and painted, meditative descriptions of specific bodies that need no correction.” By moving beyond the traditional idea of a female model examined by a male artist’s gaze, Haynes creates unself-conscious images of the private sections of the body. Her most recent series of paintings are created on a large scale and are based on numerous sittings with her subjects. The paintings can take years to complete.