Tonya Clay was born in Champaign, Illinois to two educators and creative thinkers, a professor of architecture and a professor of sociology. Art and education have always been a most important and supported part of the artist’s life.  Her artistic propensity was discovered and encouraged from the beginning.

Her earliest memory of painting, and the beginning of her education was at age three at the Child Development Lab of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign where her father was a professor of architecture for thirty-four years. Eighteen years later the artist earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, with honors, from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign in August 1997. That year Clay was awarded a three- year scholarship to the Graduate School of State University of New York, Stony Brook from where she graduated with awards in 2000. The University honored her by purchasing one of her paintings for their permanent collection.

In the fall of 2000 Clay was employed as Manager of Chappell Gallery in the West Chelsea Fine Arts Building in Manhattan.  Clay moved from New York after September 11, 2001 to spent the rest of that year traveling in Brazil where she was able to work in association with a local Brazilian artist, Zandra Miranda deSantos and gallery, Oficina do Arte.   Clay returned to the U.S. to live on the West Coast of Florida in the Spring of 2002 deciding to continue the tradition of education in her family to teach art at the college level.

She taught advanced level figure painting and representational drawing at Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. While teaching in Florida the artist has participated in artist communities around Tampa, Bradenton and Sarasota exhibiting art throughout the area including an important exhibition at the Tampa Museum.  Four large-scale works were selected and shown in their annual underCurrent overView in2004.

Clay is currently the visiting assistant professor of studio art at prestigious Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.  Recently, a profound professional experience associated with travel to Russia was made possible for the artist when she was awarded a Faculty Study and Research grant through Davidson College.  This unique opportunity inspired several paintings based on her experience. 

Clay chose to do this study in Russia in order to explore how a culture modifies its self-image with quick, dramatic changes in its political climate.  She investigated the changing attitudes of post-Soviets over the last twenty years through individual and group discussion with Russian Citizens, and by viewing their important contemporary art. Interested in how quickly and profoundly consciousness can change she did this research over the past summer 2007 in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

As she completed two years visiting at Davidson College Clay prepared for a major exhibition at Davidson’s Van Every Galleries, featuring new work produced during this time.  Within six months between Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 many of her works were exhibited in four galleries, specifically associated with different colleges, in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina.  Two of these were solo exhibitions.