Remembering Robert George Etienne Through his Art
By Jackie Morreale

Every artist leaves something behind. Sometimes it is displayed in galleries, sometimes it hangs on the walls of a family home, and sometimes it lives through the hands of someone they inspired.

My name is Jackie Morreale, and I'm the host of Wisdom for Wannabes. This is the story of my grandfather, Robert George Etienne, through his art. This past Thursday, we celebrated his heavenly hundredth birthday. Many people knew him as a World War II veteran who earned a purple heart, a husband, and a father of eight children. But to me, he was Grandpa, and Grandpa was an artist.

Grandpa had a gift for finding beauty in everyday moments. He painted peaceful seascapes, flowers, fruit, simple scenes from didn't need grand subjects. He saw beauty in the ordinary.

Before he passed away in 2024, Grandpa gave me his travelling easel and oil paints.

After his passing, my grandmother, Mary Etienne, shared part of his painted plate collection with me. Those paintings became a connection to the artist that he was.

To honor Grandpa for his heavenly hundredth birthday, I decided to recreate four of his original acrylic paintings on plates in my own medium, soft pastels on paper. They are not exact copies, they are conversations across generations.

1: RED BOUQUET

The first one is drawing grandpa's red flower bouquet.

Before I even started, a gust of wind knocked over the heavy Lenox glass pitcher I was using to hold the flowers. It shattered across the wooden floor. After cleaning up the glass, I ended up cutting my left hand.

So yes, I literally bled for Grandpa's bouquet.

It isn't my favorite flower drawing but I love it because sitting there recreating grandpa's work, it felt like he was with me.

It became another special memory.

2: BLUE HYDRANGEA

The second drawing that I attempted to recreate was Grandpa's Blue Hydrangeas. Growing up in Long Island, New York, I remember seeing these beautiful flowers everywhere during the warmer months.

Grandpa's painting immediately transported me back there.

Simple joy of noticing something beautiful.

3: HIERLOOM TOMATOES

Drawing Grandpa's heirloom tomatoes. This painting was the one that made me appreciate Grandpa not only as my grandfather but as a true artist and creative genius. Grandpa grew heirloom tomatoes in his own backyard. He loved gardening, and I remember him always making tomato soup. Those memories are so him, but when I created this painting, I discovered something deeper.

I suddenly saw the artist behind the image. The painting is simple, quiet, almost understated.

But the more I looked, the more I noticed. The way the tomato reflected off the pot, the shape of the handle, the strong perpendicular lines between the wood grain and the way the light created depth and balance. What looked like a simple painting of a tomato was actually a lesson in composition, observation, and restraint.

After all these years, he's still teaching me how to see.

4: PEACHES

Part 4, drawing grandpa's peaches. Peaches and nectarines are my absolute favorite food to eat, which makes this painting especially meaningful. There's something magical about a fresh picked peach.

The soft texture, the sweet smell, the first bite filled with summer. As the warm oranges and golden colors, I wasn't just drawing fruit. I was remembering: imagining the taste, the smell, and the feeling of those moments again.

​That is the gift of art. It allows us to revisit the people and places we love, no matter where they are.

IMAGINATION EXERCISE:

As you look at these paintings, I invite you to imagine stepping into one of grandpa's scenes.

Imagine walking through a summer garden filled with blue hydrangeas. Feel the warm breeze. Notice the colors. Imagine reaching for a peach fresh from the tree, feeling its soft skin and tasting the sweetness of summer.

Taking in the beauty of something simple.

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IN LOVING MEMORY:

This is what grandpa's art gave me: a way to pause, a way to remember, and a way to feel connected across time.

My grandfather's paintings remind me that creativity is one of the greatest gifts that we can pass down.

An artist's life does not end when they are gone.

Their vision continues through the people they inspire.

Every time I pick up my pastels, I think about my grandpa. His easel, an actual palette, his paintings. His way of noticing natural beauty. And now his art continues through mine.

Happy heavenly 100th birthday, Grandpa!

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for your creativity.

​Thank you for teaching me to see the world a little bit differently.

​Have you ever just looked at the nature around you?

Noticed how beautiful it is. Notice how everything's always changing, always growing, always evolving.

How there are cycles, seasons, even if you live in a hot place like Florida, there are cycles and seasons. How everything comes from the sun. How animals behave, the harmony that it all finds with each other.

There's this lake behind where I live and I go there quite often, usually for the very basic need to walk my dog. But I really enjoy being back there, looking at the water, observing nature around me and feeling like I'm at one with that energy of nature. That lake is my waterfront. When it gets low, when things dry up a bit, that's my beach.

I love that there are lots and lots of birds and fish and animals that have found home in that source of water right there. Lucky for us thus far, I have never seen any creatures of the gator variety back there. It's just been lots of ducks and sandhill cranes. Tadpoles are there, turning into frogs.

One day last week, I took my dog and my kids out for a walk by the lake. My doggie is very small. She's tiny but mighty.

She may not be the sharpest, but she has a very sharp nose. If there's anything pungent, anything offensive in its smell whatsoever, she's going to find it.

Found it, she did. She found this dead crow that was at the bottom of a tree. Of course, the tree that my children had started climbing.

She identified this poor thing that was there at the base of the tree, a dead crow. Of course, my reaction is, Okay, we're going to move along from here, not get near it, plenty of other trees. Let's keep going.

We moved along. We're just there, enjoying nature and the world around us, in our own little world of this lake.

All of a sudden we hear this "panic squawk". We're looking around, my kids are playing on the tree and I'm with my dog and my dog starts barking in response. This panic squawk, what is that? We all looked down the way at the other side of the lake and there's this big majestic grayish-looking bird standing there on its skinny legs.

A few feet tall, standing on the little beach of the lake. It's panic squawking.

We're looking and we're like, What's going on?

We see that the crows that are usually in the trees are flying from their perches in the trees, coming together as a flock to swoop down and within inches of this bird's head or body, swooping down very deliberately towards this bird.

So, our gut reaction, whenever we see anything like this majestic bird, with all these birds, in essence, attacking it, my children and I start yelling, Go away, go away from that bird. Leave the big bird alone.

Then it clicks. We were thinking about the tree that's just a few feet away with the dead crow at the bottom of it. We're watching all these crows come together as a flock and swooping down and dangerously close to this big bird, which is so much bigger than them. They're less than a foot each and they're coming together and creating it to feel this panic and to feel threatened.

Then the flip switches because we're like... Look at them. They're also tiny but mighty and they're coming together in numbers.

They're finding their power in their numbers. They're standing up for their flock in which this predator bird took out one of their own. Then we're like, Wow, this is nature.

This is nature at its finest, with these birds banding together as a flock and protecting themselves, standing up to a bully, really.

Then this majestic predator bird on the beach lifts off, takes flight and is still panic squawking. That's the only way I can describe it. Over the water as it's flying and from every direction, these crows are swooping at it from every tree. I didn't even know they were in these trees and they're just coming from every direction. It must have been 30, 40, 50 birds, crows, coming together to get this bully out of their lake.

It was amazing to see. Whereas we had started saying, Get away from that big bird, now we're saying, Go birds, band together, you got this, get rid of that predator.

It's funny how you can figure things out with a different perspective. Had we not seen that dead crow, poor thing, maybe we wouldn't have understood the motive behind that strength that they had to find in numbers to make their community safe again.

So hard when you have kids thinking about bullies. All you want is for them to have this better life than you had. You just want them to have this wonderful, peaceful, loving life, lots of friends, learn lots, be happy. Then they grow up and there's complications and you hear about all these terrible things happening in schools, especially bigger kids, bigger problems, so much bullying. Even when they're little.

Even as adults, even in the workplace, even socially, that's just kind of how we behave, right? There's bullying. I don't know why it's more prevalent now. But I know that what needs to change in order to combat against this is what we saw there in nature. We saw this flock of crows banding together to keep themselves safe and set a boundary.

The boundary, this is our lake, this is our boundary. You can't just come here and pick one of us off. They had to stand up for themselves and band together for their power and numbers to get rid of this dangerous thing that was endangering their flock.

I think about my younger brother, who has since passed away. When we were in high school, he was a gentle giant. He was so nice. If you can just picture a six-foot-three person who maybe was intimidating looking by his size, but who liked to laugh and like to read and like to play cards with his small but very loyal, fiercely loyal, group of friends.

I can envision him as someone who was always light at heart and happy and inquisitive and really had so much thirst for knowledge. Anyway, that's a topic for a different day.

This kid in high school was bothering him. They were both in the school band and this kid was just incessantly bothering him, bullying him. Making fun of him. He just wanted to irk my brother.

One day it was too much. He didn't want to feel irked anymore. Maybe he had discussed it with his friends. Maybe that gave him the strength to stand up for himself. I don't know. But one day he just couldn't take this this kid irking him anymore.

He gave him a quick punch in the mouth and the kid never – ever – bothered him again. In fact, he was quite nice to him after that.
 
My brother set his boundary against this bully, and he never bothered him again.

There's this senior pastor at Life.Church named Craig Groeschel, and I always enjoy hearing him speak. I also enjoy his podcast series on leadership. He always says, “I don't know who needs to hear this…”.

So, I don't know who needs to hear this.

I need to hear this.

I think we all need to hear this.

You need to find your flock. You need to find those people that make your heart sing.

Doesn't have to be people who look like you, are similar to you by way of your interests or the way you think about things. It just has to be people that make your heart sing, make you feel good about yourself, make your energy resound and multiply. Somebody that has a deeper connection with you.

It doesn't even need to be a big flock. It can just be One.

I always tell my children this: It starts with One.

Find somebody that you have a connection with. Don't let anybody make you feel alienated.

As soon as you feel alienated, that is when the bullying is potentially going to happen, right? Find your power in numbers. Find somebody who loves you and will back you up. It could be a family member. It could be a friend. It doesn't matter. Be that person who helps somebody else if you feel that your friend has been in the same situation. Be that person who gives them strength and wind beneath their wings.

So find your flock. Whether you're in the workplace, whether you're in school, whether you're on social media, whatever.

Don't let bullies push you around. Set your boundaries. Find your flock. Make sure that that predator is pushed out of your lake and doesn't pick you off piece by piece like this one was trying to do to the flock of crows. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for your friends. You'll feel so much better at the end of the day.

And I don't know who needs to hear this, but…

You are awesome.

You rock!

Find your nature. Find your flock, find your people, find your harmony, and you'll find your flight. Just like that flock of crows.
​
Have a wonderful day. Bye.

Beautiful crows at a park in West Palm Beach, Florida. Photos by Jackie Morreale.

If you're interested in learning more about crows and their behavior, here's an interesting article on AnimalResearcher.com: ​Crows: Unlocking the Secrets of Their Complex Social Behavior - animalresearcher.com

​Excerpt from link:
"Crows are highly social birds that live in family groups, similar to humans. They form strong bonds, recognize each other's faces, and enjoy spending time together. They use different sounds to communicate, warn about danger, and find food. Their social structures are crucial for survival and success in various environments."