Tonya Gregg was born and raised in South Carolina. She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1997. It was at MICA that Gregg began her career as a painter and became the first full-time art student to be featured in New American Paintings. Gregg worked at the Baltimore Museum of Art for a year before moving to Chicago to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Chicago from 1998 to 2000. She has worked in various art programs and taught college for several years. Gregg has exhibited in the United States, Germany, Nicaragua, England, and Canada. Her solo exhibitions include Columbia College, Gallery 1448, the Lawndale Art Center, and Ithaca College. She has been an artist in residence at Red Gate in Beijing, China, the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and the Wollmagazin in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Gregg’s narrative paintings explore overlapping ideas about class, consumption, popular culture and ancient mythologies.