‘Ronnie’ Casinelli, 98, paints the life she has created
By ROSEGALIE CINEUS
Beacon Media Staff Writer Oct 22, 2026
This story was originally published in the Warwick Beacon, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
For many, getting older can be harrowing, but for a local 98-year-old resident, it is simply a new chapter in a story built on her enduring zest for life.
Two weeks ago, in the unexpected warmth of Thursday afternoon, I met Veronica – “Ronnie” to those who know her – Casinelli during her weekly watercolor lesson with her teacher, Sue Greco.
It is an activity that has become “a highlight of my life,” said Casinelli, who turned 98 on Oct. 15.
Veronica Casinelli celebrated her 98th birthday on Thursday, Oct. 15. “Ronnie’s birthday was wonderful,” watercolor instructor Sue Greco said this week. “She’s still celebrating with friends and family, being taken out for meals.” During a reporter’s recent visit to Casinelli’s home, she was finishing up her latest watercolor painting, a card featuring a guardian angel for her granddaughter’s upcoming birthday.
Greco visits Casinelli at home every week, on Mondays and Thursdays, for two hours, where she works with her to produce artwork ranging from charming holiday cards to stunning landscapepaintings.
“She is just an incredible 90-plus person,” Greco said. “You don’t see anywhere what this woman does. She does not just sit and do nothing.”
Casinelli is not Greco’s first student. As an independent watercolor teacher in Rhode Island for more than a decade, Greco says she travels the state teaching children and adults all about watercolor painting.
“I have found with young and old, when you have a paintbrush in your hand, the world disappears,” Greco said.
Completely self-taught, Greco says it’s something she loves to do, visiting senior centers, housing authorities, libraries, afterschool programs for kids and assisted-living centers, traveling to communities from Westerly to Attleboro.
Sue Greco has been visiting Casinelli’s home for almost three years now, teaching her all about watercolor painting. It is a friendship that both women said has changed their lives. Greco says that Casinelli knows that the secret to life “is to be positive.”
It’s how Casinelli was introduced to Greco and her work. In 2024, Casinelli took one of Greco’s classes at the Cranston Senior Enrichment Center, and she approached the instructor, who had been impressed by her painting and said as much during the class, and asked if she would come to her house and teach her.
“I don’t always get a driver,” Greco remembered Casinelli saying to her. “I had a driver today who could bring me here, but because I don’t always have a driver and I really want to learn how to paint, will you come to my home?” Casinelli asked.
Since then, the pair has met up every week at Casinelli’s home to paint. January will mark three years since Casinelli began painting watercolor with Greco. Greco says working with Casinelli, who is her oldest student, has been amazing.
“She has stretched me like no other student has ever stretched me,” Greco said. “And she’s fearless. She faces every day in a fearless, loving attitude … not only in her art, but just in everything. If you close your eyes and you listen to her and then you just see what she does, you will think that she was 70. She’s the youngest and the oldest person I’ve ever met.”
Casinelli, a woman who smiles and laughs freely, spoke with me about her life, her view of the world and how she navigates getting older.
“I keep very busy because I’m active,” Casinelli told me. From listening to music, knitting, embroidery to exercise and her deep love for reading, Casinelli explains that it’s activities like those that gives her a reason to live.
“If I were to sit still and wait to die, it would be so boring,” Casinelli said. “I’ve got to keep moving. I’ve got to keep busy.”
Keeping busy is not something new to Casinelli. Her life’s story is a love letter to living a full and vibrant life, with clear throughlines of creative expression, community and an unwavering faith in God.
Throughout her picturesque single-family home there are mementos of her life, most of them canvases. It’s like a museum of her life in its most creative and artistic form.
Casinelli shares her creativity and connects with her community through special cards she makes with her artwork. And inside these cards, Casinelli showcases another creative outlet in her life, writing.
From oil paintings she made decades ago to the very first quilt she made by herself in 1981 – it still covers her bed to this day – Casinelli’s home is physical testament to her determination to lead her life authentically, creatively and joyfully.
For Casinelli, staying busy and expressing herself creatively are not only crucial pillars in her life, but also things she simply enjoys doing, things she says help enrich her life as she gets older.
Aging is a challenging and complex progression for all involved, particularly as loved ones are lost and health scares grow.
It is something Casinelli is all too familiar with. Her husband, Mario Casinelli, died six years ago. He was a pharmacist who used to work at the Cranston Senior Center and was the beloved owner of Oaklawn Pharmacy.
Years ago, Casinelli made an heirloom quilt, which tells the story of her and her late husband’s love and life. Today, it hangs over the bed in one of her rooms.
More recently, Casinelli shared, she was in the hospital for a heart problem. And she now uses a walker after losing some of the use of her right leg a few years ago.
Casinelli knows just how easy it is to give up when life takes a turn.
But “you can’t just wait to die,” she says bluntly. “You don’t sit back and let it take you. You’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to get out there and work at it. It doesn’t come to you. You’ve got to look for it.”
Despite all these challenges, Greco says, Casinelli is “the most uplifting, positive person” she knows.
“I want to aspire to be her in my 90s,” Greco said. “And we joke, ‘When I’m 90 and you’re still painting, I’ll come with my walker.’”
Loneliness is something Casinelli is also familiar with. But she keeps it at bay through her artwork and creativity, she says, where she connects to her loved ones with the things she creates.
It is a poignant message in an increasingly digitized age.
“People have lost connection,” Casinelli said, recalling a night last year when she was out to dinner at a local restaurant and saw a family of four all on their phones at the table. “They don’t know how to communicate anymore.”
She notes that it is her community and that very connection that truly makes her life worthwhile.
From her family (she has two children), the Cranston Senior Center, her homecare CNAs at Bayada, to the Cranston Public Library, which drops off books for her to read every few weeks, and friends like Greco, Casinelli says they make her life “something to look forward to.”
And her classes with Greco are just one of the highlights she points out. Casinelli said Greco has been a “tremendous help” explaining that the art she creates is not only by her, but that it’s also a collaboration between the pair.
“I just do what I’m capable of doing and Sue takes over where I can’t do things,” Casinelli said. “And she’s made my life just so worth living, so worthwhile, so [accomplished]. And I look forward to when she comes here … it’s a blessing.”
Another oil painting by Casinelli hangs on the wall inside her home. The act of creative expression is the foundation of her life, Casinelli says. And she does that in a variety of ways, from knitting and quilting to reading, writing and painting in oil and watercolor.
Before our interview concluded last Thursday, Casinelli showed Greco and I around her homesharing the collection of artwork she has created over the years, and surprising us both with the depth of her talent.
But it is her life’s story, echoing throughout the halls of her home, that serves as a moving reminder to us all that sometimes, living a full and vibrant life begins with something as simple as pure love of life itself.
Read The real fountain of youth cascades from happy souls, a Beacon opinion essay on aging.
