Greg Payce was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1956. He became fascinated with clay at the age of six, when he watched a potter turning a lump of clay into a vessel on the television. In high school, he favored the arts over the sciences, spending all of his spare time in the clay studio. He received his Bachelor of Arts, with a minor in Anthropology, from the University of Alberta in 1977, and his Master of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1987. Payce has been Head of Ceramics at the Alberta College of Art and Design since 1989. He has exhibited in more than twenty solo exhibitions and over one hundred and fifty group exhibitions throughout the world