Vancouver artist Anna Marie Repstock is fascinated by the role written language can play as the unconventional focal point in a traditional visual medium. Repstock, who recently completed an MFA in visual art from Simon Fraser University, has been working with oil on canvas for around a decade. Her recent work, characterized by boldly rendered word combinations, seeks to embrace text as well-suited material for painting.

The Straight reached Repstock by phone to talk about her work.

What interests you about using text in your paintings?

Language is seen as being outside of painting. Painting is supposed to be purely visual. It actually has a relationship to art history where, historically, language in art belongs to conceptual art. Painting, on the other hand, was seen as being outside of conceptual art and was supposed to be concerned with purely visual problems. So I kind of want to take issue with that and to actually emphasize that language is material. I actually see language as material for art.

Where do these words come from?

I actually choose them quite carefully out of I guess a process of experimental writing that I do where I brainstorm. I carry a journal with me or a sketchbook with me and I take it to the studio with me which is often the place where ideas come out. I actually just write things down over time and I try to come up with words that I feel work well together. Honestly, sometimes they just occur to me almost in a flash, which is fantastic because then it’s not like doing any work. But sometimes they come out of this process of experimental writing.

Where do the typeface designs you use come from?

At a certain point I was totally interested in typography and working with fonts and stuff like that. I decided to move away from that because fonts and typefaces are actually quite loaded with information. Every font has a whole history to it. I just don’t want to be responsible for that, on the one hand, and on the other hand, typography, I guess I’m not as interested in that as I am in painting. Like, the relationship between typography and painting, there could be one, but I’m not interested in things like fonts and stuff like that, which seem separate from painting. So you know what I just decided to do was make my own fonts. The text that you see in my paintings, it’s made with certain brush choices. (…) I’m not adhering to a font or anything like that other than my own aesthetic choices.

What role does the meaning of the words play in the visual experience?

I don’t want to pin down any specific meaning. I want it to be more open than that. In this way I like to think about them sometimes more in terms of poetry, and if it’s possible to have a two-word poem—maybe it is—where the meaning is really open to a number of different things depending on the viewer. I want the viewer to come and be able to meander in it. I don’t want to seal it up and say, “This means this,” because I can’t do that. I wouldn’t want to do that. I want to keep it lighter and let it travel a little bit more.

Portrait of An Artist is a regular feature on Straight.com that profiles local visual artists. Suggest an artist to profile in the comments section below or by sending a message via Twitter to @thomsonreporter.