Clay Sinclair

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Born on the 25th May 1968 in Blenheim, the day after the nearby Inaguahua Junction earthquake. I was literally shaken out a few weeks early.

My family moved to Hamilton around 1971/2, where I was raised the son of an artist and tennis loving mother.

When I was 12 my family moved from Laurence St. Bankwood, Hamilton to the countryside near the village of Matangi on the outskirts of Hamilton.

Schools attended, Bankwood Primary, Fairfield Intermediate, Berkley Intermediate and Hamilton Boys High School.

Studied civil engineering at Waikato Technical Institute, and worked at Murray North Partners and the Hamilton City Council.

Got involved with music as a bass player and played in bands Pleasant Strangers, The Triangles and The Pilgrims. Also toured NZ and Perth with YFC band, Certain Sounds in 1992.

After the disbandment of The Pilgrims in 1996, I flew to London on a two year working holiday visa. In August of that year I met Milly Benyon on the way to the Greenbelt Festival. By November we were going out and got engaged in Paris 1997. we married near Milly's family home in Buckinghamshire and rented a one bed property at 58 Bennerley Road, Clapham Junction, London.

Late 1997 we bought our first house in Churchill Gardens, Pimlico. Two years later we moved to Tooting, SW London where our two sons were born. Although Silas was actually born in Milton Keynes, as he decided to arrive early while his mother was visiting her parents in Adsock, BUCKS.

Soon after the birth of Silas in 2004 the family moved to Hamilton NZ for 6 months to explore what would happen next. I was very depressed as an engineer and knew it was the wrong thing for me. While in NZ I started painting more regularly and returned to London April 2005 to see if I could make it as an artist.

I initially spent two years displaying and successfully selling on the Bayswater Road Art Market. In the midst of this we eventually left London for Oxford , close to Milly's sister, brother and parents. I had a studio at the Ark T Centre in Temple Cowley and in 2008 got picked up by Woolff Gallery, London.

Near the end of 2013, it felt really right as a family to leave Oxford. I typed in to Google "Where do the open minded people live?" Stroud appeared as one of the results and was soon visited. Within two weeks we had put a deposit down on a new build house and in Sept 2014 moved in to our new home.

Within a few months of living in Stroud, I received a call from my mother in NZ, who informed me that my Great Great Grandmother was christened in Minchinhampton, just up the hill from where I was now living.

I now have an art studio/gallery in Stroud and have set up (tongue in cheekily) The People's Republic of Stroud, which has gone down rather well with the locals and hopefully my long departed ancestors.