Biography
Born in Rigby, ID, Donnell Hunter received an MS degree in English at Utah State University and returned to teach at Ricks College in the English Department where he taught until 1993. Hunter also earned an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 1982.
Hunter began studying watercolor with Richard Bird, Carl Purcell, Frank Webb and enrolled in art classes at Brigham Young University-Idaho after receiving a small watercolor as a gift.
Hunter liked watercolor for its surprising unpredictability and fascinating hydraulics and began painting watercolors with palette knives. Like writing poetry, he relied more on feeling than on technique and saw art as a voyage of discovery rather than an attempt at verisimilitude.
He and his wife Nita Kearsley lived in LaBelle, Idaho and were the parents of eight children, 31 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.