His website, http://michaeldonnellan.com/ says he was born in Paris,
his parents are US citizens living in Italy. He went to Italian
elementary, when he was age 9 he went to boarding school in England
and then high school in Abu Dhabi. He spent one year at the American
College in Greece and finally University of California at Berkeley.
He had never visited the US until he came for the University. He was
not happy there, dropped out after 3 quarters. (IMHO, UC at Berkeley
is not representative of most universities in the US.) Check out his
website, you feel the emotion in his art...