Based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, I am able to finally present this gallery website after thirty years of various creative endeavors.

You will find my last name as Alleway when it comes to writing and podcast projects, but my family name and that of my artist grandfather is 'Jones'...therefore my chosen 'pencil name'.

Even my signature which shows the exaggerated initials C & J with the year split by the J, was my grandfather's painting signing style. I wanted to keep that little element in place for him. I hope he is looking down and can see this sentimental memory on every piece I draw. My parents always had his artwork hung on our walls, and so it was always like he was there in a way. 

Life found me based within the administration arena for a local school board over the past nineteen years. The call of the pencil from my first college drawing class in 1989, is now a grand voice from within again, and I've gone back to my art roots. Sitting at the drawing table feels like home.

There are always people, places and things that influence every artist, from the medium we choose to work in, to the subject matter. My early influences that have stuck with me, started with early family life in the country on the water. There was always a colouring book and crayons, markers or pencils scattered all around my room, that looked out onto the lake. We went to sleep with loon songs in the distance, along with the sound of the train passing by at the end of the road we lived on. It was all accompanied by many Disney story books which had some of the most iconic illustrations in them to date. I would stare at them with admiring eyes trying to copy them within childlike scribbled renderings. At nineteen years old, I moved on to amazing college art instructors, and then to two other wonderful artists who ran a gallery I worked in when in my early twenties. A commissioned piece I was asked to do of a lighthouse in Main, New York for a nice couple visiting our area, was the highlight of my time there.

For twelve years after college graphic design, I also worked in the field for two printing companies after working in the fine art gallery and then independently as a graphic artist. It created great memories of projects, such as a large birch tree forest mural for the local Ministry of Natural Resources, which then moved on to be used at Science North for a display.

I added a quirky page to it all by going to people's homes and custom painting directly onto their walls in florals and horticultural designs. I laughed one day while lying on a kitchen floor to finish a few leaf details that a client wanted trailing down the entrance to the floor, feeling like somehow maybe the Italian masters were trying to tell me something? "No." I thought, "It's probably not Michelangelo you hear...maybe Debbie Travis is whispering to add stone texture behind the leaves so your shadowing pops." (a respectful nod of course, with her painting techniques influencing a more creative home environment then). Numerous logo designs for Soo businesses and other interesting projects gave me my start locally prior to the school board needing to come into my world to support life's foundation at the time. 

During my time at the computer in the office setting…the pencil called quietly as Life happened. I had helped with school art projects and assisted a few kids with their drawing skills along the way, but I needed to listen closer and I started to think about that feeling of being at the drawing table, immersed in the process of sketch to final piece and making this a consistent endeavor. At that time, writing surprisingly became a creative muse for me with the need to finally put an old story into place that I had been brewing in my mind for years. After visiting the UK in 2004, I had an itch to tell that story that wouldn't go away. I began writing and finalized a bucket list dream after a two book independent duo was in my hands. But still...the pencil called and I've finally heard it. 

My grandfather was a huge catalyst as I stare at two of his pieces every day at home to this day. He was a fine artist and also owned a sign company in the early 1930's here is the Soo. I never got to meet him, as he passed before most of the grandchildren were born, but the genetic urge to create was definitely passed down to some of us.

I'd like to think that every time I walk by his work, I am being quietly coaxed to pick up that pencil again and time has given me the chance to feel ready. What a nice thought it is to me. No one knows what makes an artist begin. It's different for everyone, but beginning is the key. I had always wondered what it would have been like to have sat with my Welsh artistic grandpa and to have learned from him. It brings tears to my eyes and humbles me beyond words thinking..."Maybe I did learn a little from you. Let's find out. Ok grandpa, I'm listening now."

And so I have begun. Everything in time will come full circle they say. I'm off to the drawing table to find another adventure at the tip of the pencil to test the theory. Onward and upward. 

"In this fast paced world, I endeavor to go back to basics; human hand, pencil, subject...ART." - Cheryl