Hello! My name is John Valters Paintner.
One of my passions is storytelling through print and visual arts. I have always loved writing stories, but in recent years I have loved working collaboratively with film and theatre makers to bring those stories to life on screen and stage.
After studying education and theology in college, I became a parish minister for four years and a high school religion teacher for twelve years.
I’m a native Californian, but my wife Christine and I moved to Europe seven years ago. After a six month stay in Vienna, Austria, we moved to Ireland and settled in the heart of Galway City where we run and operate Abbey of the Arts.
Besides helping lead pilgrimages and teach online retreats integrating spirituality and the arts, I have been active in the local arts scene for the past several years.
I have taken screenwriting courses at the Seattle Film Institute and the National University of Ireland, Galway. I’ve written several short films for Little Cinema Galway’s 48 Hour and One-Take Film Challenges. I have also written two (NSFW) shorts with Project Spatula that were translated into and performed in Irish for Bloc, a social media division of TG4. I have also taken several courses from Galway-based ‘Over the Edge’ and was a featured reader at their February, 2016 event. My work appeared in Pukka Print Magazine’s inaugural issue.
I was an active member of The Theatre Room Galway for many years as a committee member and writer, as well as an occasional director and performer. My one-act play “What’s for Dinner?” won Best Script in 2015 and my one-act play “Newlywed 50th Reunion Show” won Best Play at the Theatre Room Awards in 2018. The Theatre Room Galway was the Ireland award winner for the EPIC Awards 2017 and was awarded a Druid FUEL residency in 2015, of which my one-act play “Guilty Pleasure” was a part.
In 2017, I was a co-producer for Morgan Creative’s theatre production of “Crime & Punishment.” More recently, I have expanded a one-act play, first produced for The Theatre Room Galway, into a four-act script called “Guilty Pleasures.” I hope to stage it in the coming year.
My purpose in creating this website is to motivate myself to share my work with a larger audience. I have enjoyed writing short stories and scripts for over a decade now, but have been too shy in putting myself “out there.”
My goal for this website is to create an online portfolio of my stories, scripts, and shorts films.