We've spent significantly more time in Big Bend in winter than in any other season. (Hiking in extreme heat isn't among our outdoor passions. ) So when I'm back home, browsing my reference photos, much of what I unearth shows monochromatic shades of rock, unrelieved by the startlingly colorful vegetation that graces the desert other parts of the year. I can live with that. But sometimes, I want more of an escape than winter color can offer.

There's a concept in fiction termed "the willing suspension of disbelief". Think: Harry Potter running smack through that brick wall to board the train to Hogwarts; Peter Pan urging all the children who believe in fairies to clap their hands and save Tinkerbell; James Bond vanquishing villain after villain enroute to sipping shaken, not stirred martinis.

Accomplished storytellers lure us into their worded lairs by enticing us with reality, presenting facts and images familiar to us. Then comes the enchantment. Once we're grounded in what we know to be real, once we're emotionally involved with the characters, a skillful writer can drop Fluffy, the Three-Headed Dog on us and we won't even blink. In fact, we'll likely want to pet ol' Fluffy as we toss our skepticism out the window of James Bonds' speeding Tesla and feed it to that crocodile smiling under a pirate ship with a clock ticking inside him. We WANT to believe, because believing takes us beyond even the bleakest day. We want to close our eyes and clap! clap! clap! free our imagination. We yearn to believe in more that what our eyes can see.

Scroll up to my reference photo for this new painting now. It shows the Rio Grande near Hot Springs one December noon. It's a real place, and I really stood there once. But in my photo, the sun washes out what color the landscape holds. The trees are barren, the cliffs devoid of color-rich shadows. But the convergence of the low water around the sandbars is both powerful and suggestive of movement. Intriguing patterns can make an intriguing composition for a painting. That's the reality you see.

But in painting it, feeling frisky and craving color, I added my version of a three-headed dog: I presto-changed the time, and stark high noon became late afternoon with its delicious complexities of lights and darks; I waved my magic brush across the yellow ranges of my palette and cloaked the starkly barren trees in golden leaves that twinkle color through the water.

The bones of this painting are set in reality. But the mood is cast by color, which I created by willingly suspending my own disbelief so I could escape the bonds of my photo to step into a moment of magic. I've seen these colors, heard the wind rustle golden leaves into the river. So I imagined standing there looking up the river on a different day, in a different season. It could happen. And in my painting, it did happen. (Applause is appropriate here, btw. Clap! Clap! Clap!)

Artist's Tip: Should you want to add Peter Pan's ticking crocodile, I suggest you imagine it swishing its tail in the lower purple-shadowed corner. Bond's sports cars, however, frankly wouldn't make it across the desert. Some boundaries apply, even with magic.