Cottonwoods against red rock palisades are the biscuits and gravy of the Davis Mountains in autumn, inseparable in your mind once you've seen the old trees decked out in golden splendor. The first hint of cool weather urges the old giants to start pushing out the summer's greens in favor of the showier sun colors of autumn.

The edges are the first to glow golden, and as the transformation progresses, yellows and oranges replace even the deepest pockets of green until the whole tree is a fluttering mass of in-your-face sunshine yellow. As an artist, I suspect I'm more attuned to color nuances than some people, but no one can miss the masses of lemon yellow pasted against a severe clear blue sky over seriously red rock cliffs. See them once, remember them forever.

The other thing about cottonwoods is their silent tenacity in a harsh land. They survive wind, drought, unseasonal freezes, fire. Lightning can split a tree in half and one half might survive to grow another century. They can be ruthlessly pruned away from power lines, only to shrug that defacement off and choose a new direction of growth. They can look awful, yet still change colors and present themselves with unabashed pride each fall.

This tree is a battered old guy along the highway, just past the pasture where the elk hang out between Fort Davis and Alpine. He looked so ragged all summer, I was amazed to see him turning golden last week.

My working title was ' The Old Guy's Still Got it in Him to Turn Golden". That's sort of a mouthful, but it's what I was thinking as I did his portrait. (We artists not only see enhanced color, we can anthropomorphize trees and put together weird thoughts as easily as we can mix red and yellow to make orange.)

At a loss for a title that would preach, I sought fresh eyes. Good friends Andy and Diane got a glimpse of him before the painting was fully polished and suggested I call the painting "A Hint of Color Around the Edges". Good. A second email added, "It’s a really happy painting, as if the tree is smiling! Even the barbed wire!"

As I tweaked and refined, those thoughts were rollicking across my sub-conscious. I worked from that until the finished painting reflected them fully. You probably never realized barbed wire could smile, did you?
Heck yes it smiles!
Live and learn.