For every distinct idea there exists a plastic thought to translate it. But ideas usually come to us tangled up and indistinct. Thus, the important thing is to isolate them and hold them pure before the interior vision. A work is born from a kind of confused emotion...I turn the thought within this emotion over, until my vision of it is clarified, and it appears with all possible distinctness. Then I search for a spectacle to translate it exactly...
Puvis de Chavannes c.1898