I recently had dinner with a fellow blogger, and he asked me: Why a studio?
Well the recent online edition of the China Heritage Quarterly has everything you ever wanted to know about a scholar’s studio but were afraid to ask.
For a Chinese artist, a studio name is suggestive of his or her artistic persona and the creative realm from which they draw inspiration. It is a highly personal construction of words that serves to link the artist to ideas, people or places, often in the past, but also to the present. The name can allude to a physical space such as a studio, a library or a building where the act of painting, writing or thinking happens, but equally it may just be an imaginary place or conjure a poetic sensibility expressive of the artist’s temperament.
Studio names are an integral part of the process of artistic and literary creation. They do not remain static and often shift in and out of use. Many artists and writers adopt new names to reflect changes in physical circumstances or their mental world. Many names refer to desirable human qualities that may be linked to Confucian, Buddhist or Daoist thought, such