Fragment of an email exchange on "studio is sanctuary"

“The most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time.”

Writing, painting, living, dying, now, then ...

I've been thinking of what you said [citing Barnett Newman]  "studio is sanctuary" or was it "sanctuary is studio"?

Either way I question what seemed to be an emphasis on the physical space of the studio.

Yes, it is a sanctuary … but memory, that space inside yourself and through which you filter the images that flow out through the tip of your sable brush, might be the more sacred of spaces and perhaps the foundation that is the (artist's) studio, no?

Admittedly, it is much easier to speak of that physical rather than what some might term a psychological space. And it does help if the physical structure which sits atop the foundation is conducive to creating that of which Dr. Sacks wrote. This makes me think of all those sacred sites ... foundations ... around this rock upon which civilization after civilization, culture after culture, has built and might continue to build sacred structures to contemplate " what it is like living in the world at this time" upon.

'Sanctuary is studio' and 'Studio is sanctuary' and both are simultaneously mental and physical constructs.

There are those people who think being without a physical studio-sanctuary is an artistic practice all its own ... and I am not saying that it cannot be but I question if the lack of the physical sanctuary is really resulting from the lack of a mental foundation -- the psychological support that is itself sacred and upon which the physical structure can be built? If those artists lack the tools to build such a foundation then how can they build any type of sanctuary for themselves or advise others on the building or preservation of their own sacred space - physical or mental?

For all her griping about the limitations of her own physical space for making, for writing, etc. she does seem to find ways to work around and maintain a certain degree of sanctity (if not sanity!). And, it is after all I who inhabits and spews forth from that other sacred space of hers  ... and hopefully this makes the disturbances in her studio-sanctuary and my 'death' a bit more comprehensible ...?