Donald Sultan studied at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and received his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sultan has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Corcoran School of Art, University of New York and UNC, Asheville, and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship. Since the late 1970s, his work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows at premier galleries and museums around the world.

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Sultan's large scale flowers, although seemingly fit into the category of still life, break into the realm of abstraction. Known for his use of formal elements, such as pure color, shape, and organic forms, Sultan's work has a subtlety as well as weightiness, due to the large size, that is balanced by his attention to positive and negative space.

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Sultan's work can be found in several prestigious public collections including, Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; High Museum of Art, Atlanta.