Wild Things Must Roam Free Painting

Joe Walentini was born in 1953 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1985 he moved to New York City, living for seven years in Soho and three more in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While in New York he developed a relationship with the painters Edwin Ruda and Peter Pinchbeck. Through this association he was involved with what was loosely known as the Dante Group. In the late 80s and early 90s the Dante Group organized a number of group exhibitions of their work in and out of New York. In 1999 Joe founded Abstract Art Online (www.abartonline.com), a web-published, monthly art journal devoted to abstract art that featured criticism, artist profiles, essays and a conversations series. After 7 years of publication Abstract Art Online has been transformed into an online exhibition space, Galerie Cerulean, for which the focus is abstract-centric art. Joe received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976 from St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota. In 1982 he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.