Matisse has mentioned that it is better to mull over a subject for a long while, rather than painting it immediately with raw emotion. In doing this, the artist has the chance of sorting the essential from the superfluous. With contemplation and a somewhat distant viewpoint, the great artist can return to the previous mood, to relay his experience. Having had the emotions, and having experienced the feelings, an artist might then hope to share them with his fellow human beings in a subtle enough way for it to be properly received. Emotion transmitted too soon, leads to art that is overly sweet, or tortured ; art that is embarrassing, in itself, insensitive, to the viewer.

 

"... many artists and art students are helpless in front of the objects they see and the shapes they make because their desire to be artists does not spring from the profound need to give an account of what it is like to be a human being in this world." (213)
Rudolf Arnheim

 

213. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art, (Berkeley and L.A., Cal., University of California Press, 1966), p. 299