Francisco and Ana Maria Donis were both from Guatemala and immigrated to Chicago Illinois, where their son Alex was born on April 8, 1964. They moved their family to Los Angeles in 1967 where Ana Maria worked as a nurse for LA County and Franciscco had a restaurant services company. They retired to travel and consider themselves "somewhat" socialistic in their worldviews.

Alex Donis is a Los Angeles-based visual artist whose work examines and redefines the boundaries set within religion, politics, race, and sexuality. Interested in toppling society's relationship to icons, his work is often influenced by a tri-cultural (Pop, Latin and Queer) experience. He has worked extensively in a variety of media including painting, installation, video, and works on paper. He was educated at a Catholic school in East Los Angeles, a prep school in Massachusetts, and a military academy on the southern coast of Guatemala. He received his undergraduate degree at California State University, Long Beach and his graduate degree from Otis College of Art and Design. Donis has exhibited his work at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; the Geffen Contemporary (MoCA); the Laguna Museum of Art, Laguna Beach; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); the Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco; Pretoria Arts Museum, South Africa; and Artspace, Sydney Australia. His work was included in the landmark exhibition "Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity 1900-2000" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His work has been featured in FlashArt International, Artweek, The Los Angeles Times, La Opinion, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Sydney Morning Herald. His work will be part of the three-volume anthology Chicano/Chicana Art in the United States published by the Bilingual Press of the University of Arizona, Phoenix. Alex has also been awarded residencies at the University of Texas, Austin; the Brandywine Institute, Philadelphia; and Artspace, Sydney, Australia. Donis has taught drawing and painting at the Watts Towers Arts Center, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. He was also an artist in residence at the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica.