George Hunt spent his childhood in Texas and Hot Springs, Arkansas. After high school, he attended college at the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, on a football scholarship and studied art as a career. He did postgraduate studies at the University of Memphis and at New York University. Hunt spent three decades teaching art education and coaching at George Washington Carver High School in Memphis before dedicating full time to painting.

Ninety-nine percent of what George Hunt painted came from the Southern African-American experience, especially the folk tradition, civil rights movement, the mythic heroism of Black manhood, and blues music and culture. His mother-in-law owned a juke joint in Helena, Arkansas, called the Dreamland Cafe. There, Hunt listened to blues legends like Sonny Boy Williamson and watched the patrons dance, drink, eat catfish, court, sport and score. The visions for Hunt's art have been steeped in the music and life passages of blues people.