What's an "idea"?

This evening, it occurred to me that I didn't know how to articulate what an "idea" was. Here is the opening few paragraphs of the Wikipedia to help out. It does a fine job giving a general sense; no need to recreate it.

In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images. Many philosophers consider ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. The capacity to create and understand the meaning of ideas is considered to be an essential and defining feature of human beings. In a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflex, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place.

As artists, our ideas formulate and materialize into works of creativity. Every idea is creative - whether or not it is manifested through watercolors, graphite pencils, words on a computer screen, or beautiful conversations over wine. To me, I imagine that we are all artists, each masters of our most cherished tools.