“I’d never picked up a paintbrush or even a crayon in my life,” said Jodi DeCrenza. But just one day after spontaneously dabbling in paint—at her birthday lunch with a friend—someone asked to buy her first painting. It might sound like a fairy tale, the kind of overnight success story that makes skeptics roll their eyes. But as with any artist’s journey, DeCrenza’s story is rooted in years of personal exploration, emotional depth, and the courage to embrace spontaneity.
Jodi DeCrenza had long built her career shaping physiques—not from marble or clay, but through the health and fitness industry. As a personal trainer, she helped clients tone, strengthen, and become their best selves, using their own bodies as living canvases. DeCrenza also worked in TV, movies and the commercial print industry where she appeared in many ads and modeling campaigns. Then, one day, everything changed.
“I had just finished a four-day workshop about personal growth and success, but I came out of it feeling discouraged,” she recalls. “A friend invited me to lunch and said, ‘Let’s paint for your birthday.’ I told her I’d never painted anything in my life. She ignored me, asked me to pick four colors, and I just started.”
What emerged was more than paint on canvas—it was a revelation. A client who spotted her work the next day offered to buy it. More paintings followed. So did more buyers. Before long, galleries and collectors around the world took notice.
Photo by Ashod Kassabian
DeCrenza creates work that pulsates with the power of positivity in her lovely cottage in Old Greenwich, CT. She enthusiastically explores emotions that energize her creativity. She employs a kaleidoscope of radiant colors inspired by the natural world. With a blend of spontaneous and intuitive brushstrokes , she creates pieces that live somewhere between impressionistic and abstract. She predominantly works with oil and acrylic but most recently has added Resin and a few other mediums to her mix. She looks at each piece as a visceral journey into soothing, enigmatic, and fierce representations of landscapes, nature and the viewers’ own interpretations.
DeCrenza states she has a profound passion for expressing the mystery of the divine. Self-realized and deeply rooted in the emotional body, she explores her artistry with an uncanny mastery of the color wheel.
Art – good art – is hard-won. The world’s most famous artists, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Monet, pursued their passion for years before garnering the much-deserved acclaim for their masterpieces. Even Grandma Moses, who burst on the art scene as a painter at the age of 78, had fine-tuned her talents through her needlework and the quilts she sewed before she put brush to canvas, each a telling portrait of the farm life she intimately knew and experienced. Despite the perception that overnight sensations occur out of the blue, they typically have taken years to create, telling long-held stories and evoking emotions that reflect a lifetime of personal experiences. Expressed in mediums and colors that nuance the artist’s vision, they speak through imagery thoughtfully and powerfully rendered.
Painting sparked something inside of her, she shared, manifesting a talent she never knew she had. “I finally found a space to leave life’s challenges behind, somewhere else and I let my emotions come through in a colorful way on my canvas. I have created many paintings some people say many masterpieces but not everything is a masterpiece.” DeCrenza says. “When I feel intense overwhelming surges through my body that’s when I know I’ve created a masterpiece. I call it having The Wow Factor!”
PASSAGE by Jody Decrenza
Her work, a personal study in Abstract Impressionism, has been shown all over Europe, including The Louvre (Paris, France), The Carrousel du Louvre, an exhibition space connected to the museum. The Museum of Modern Art (Barcelona, Spain), The Museum of Science and Technology (Milan, Italy), Colorida Art Gallery (Lisbon, Portugal), Artio Gallery (Toronto, Canada), and was recently invited to show her paintings in Dubai and South Korea. She was named one of 60 Masters by ArtTour International Magazine in 2022 and her works have appeared in the magazine on several occasions. She was also given a Leonardo da Vinci award for 50 of the top Universal Artists of 2023 curated by Salvatore Russo. “I have even been a guest artist featured in Times Square on the Jumbotron during New Year’s Eve, with my face and art flashing up on the big screen for three days.”
“I’m in South Korea, Dubai, Italy, Paris, and Portugal. The Agora Gallery represents me in New York and I am also represented by Sorokin Gallery on Greenwich Avenue.” Carol Sorokin, the owner of largest private art gallery in Greenwich, Connecticut has sold many pieces of DeCrenza’s works.
Her talent came as a total surprise to her. As a child, she admitted, she could not draw, dismissing the crayons and finger paints of childhood for other pursuits.
“But one day, my mother gave me a box of buttons and I started tinkering with them, sewing buttons on pieces of elastic and ultimately making bracelets as holiday gifts. It was the only creative thing that I did,” she said. She also loved going to art galleries, even working in a SoHo gallery for a few summers. “I really liked all the art, it was just so beautiful. But prior to that, nothing, and after that, it eventually went away as I delved into the fitness world and the acting world.”
With one life changing exception. She was tapped to design a chain of fitness centers, including its brand identity, spearheading the décor and details with selections of her own choosing. “I added a brilliant shade of purple into the mix, introducing a bold pop of color on the padding of the machines. For the logo and tag line, it was an androgynous being with a muscle that was ripping itself out of the frame. Visually it positioned the fitness gallery as sculpting the ultimate piece of art: your body, your mind, your spirit. I brought that piece of art with me when I moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1999 and was soon training celebrities and CEOs out of their homes.” One connection led to another for Jodi whose star-studded clientele remains huge fans of her work.
Initially, her palette consisted of just four colors: orange, yellow, green, and purple. These basic hues, combined with her vibrant imagination, gave birth to captivating pieces that caught the eye of art lovers. Her Instagram account showcases her evolution, revealing a progression from greens and blues to rich, complex color compositions that reflect her artistic growth. Her brother affectionately dubbed her the “master of the color wheel,” recognizing her exceptional ability to blend colors in ways that seem instinctive to her – and in combinations others wouldn’t dare to. This talent attracted the attention of a Harvard-educated art historian, who remarked on her unique perception of color, suggesting she had an innate gift to create visually stunning pieces differently than anyone else.
A self-avowed risk tasker, her creative process is spontaneous; she often sits in front of a blank canvas, allowing her feelings to guide her brush. She has experimented with various mediums, including resin and oil paints, using unconventional tools from her kitchen to create unique textures and effects.
“I love mixing colors and playing with colors. That part is easy,” she says. “It’s the creative blocks that throw me.” One particularly intense block led to a breakthrough when she flung paint across a canvas and sprayed water over it. The result was unexpectedly stunning.
PASSION by Jody DeCrenza
“It was like I passed through a portal that released everything I’d been holding in. That moment gave birth to pieces like Passage and Passion, paintings full of transition and feeling.”
Her paintings are visceral. Rich purples, vibrant blues, and fiery reds reflect specific chapters of her life. Time spent living in Bermuda inspired playful pinks and oceanic blues in Jewels of the Ocean. Sapling green and deep purple dioxide—her favorites—show up again and again, often mixed instinctively into combinations others wouldn’t dare attempt.
“I like to work with many different blues and greens, and especially enjoy using sapling green. I love to work with purple dioxide too; it’s a very deep, dramatic purple that looks almost black,” she explained as she described a painting she recently completed. “I have lived a very interesting life. And I feel very blessed to be able to share a part of my life with others.”
Though she’s considered formal study—perhaps even moving to Paris—Jodi’s friends insist she stay true to her instinctive process.
“They’re afraid I’ll lose what makes my work special,” she says. “They tell me my emotions come through in my colors and compositions. I paint what I feel—deeply. That’s where the ‘wow’ factor comes from.”
While her original paintings are large-format and sell for thousands, Jodi is passionate about accessibility. She reproduces select pieces on metal at smaller sizes and lower prices, allowing more people to enjoy her work. She has also partnered with a Montreal-based company to produce fashion and home goods—clothing, linens, and accessories—that feature her vibrant artwork.
“Whether it’s on a canvas or a jacket, I want my art to connect with people. That’s what it’s about.”
You can view her work at The First Bank of Greenwich and at an art event hosted by bank president Frank Gaudio at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, on Wednesday, September 24 from 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Contact: @Jodidecrenza | jdecrenza@hotmail.com
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