In that camera-sharp place where planetary upheaval had lift its signature: the now placid monuments that, as far as anyone out there cared, had been there forever, I would undertake—"dare" would be a truer word—to paint the unpaintable. One year was enough to sear it on the lens of memory (It was not done on the spot, as artists generally did: planting their shaky easels in sand or shale, wind and sun; dipping brushes in globs of paint and hope) so that, in the studio alone with my dream I would record it like a diary entry, just like that.

     –from Dorothea Tanning: Birthday and Beyond.   Exhibition brochure.  Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000.