FEATURE: Color & Community on the Borderlands: The Life & Legacy of Hal Marcus

The El Paso art legend that is Hal Marcus, published in Glasstire magazine of art.

https://glasstire.com/2026/04/20/color-community-on-the-borderlands-the-life-legacy-of-hal-marcus/

Transcript

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Colour and community on the borderlands, the life and legacy of Hal Marcus. A feature published in Glass Tire magazine, uh the paper of record, the magazine of record for twenty-five years of Texas visual art. As a kid in El Paso, Lelania Marcus struggled to get up in the mornings for school. In particular, she would stress about what to wear, and the difficulty in choosing clothes would complicate the start of every day. Her father, though, who was always full of optimism and creativity and intent on finding solutions, devised a plan. At night, before tucking her into sleep, they would both go through Lelania's clothes, make a choice, and dress a stuffed animal that Lelania had next to her bed by way of preparation. In that way, every morning on waking the clothes were there and ready to go. It was an act typical of Hal Marcus, El Paso born and bred artist, advocate, community leader, author, philanthropist, gallery owner, and father. And it was an act which over time became a shared ritual for father and daughter, one which is a foundational memory for Leylania. He never saw problems, just opportunities, she says of him. Nothing was ever a struggle. He chose optimism and creativity and to always be there and present for you. Before Leylenia's birth in the 1970s, Hal Marcus and his then wife Judith Anne bought a dilapidated house in El Paso built in 1903. Leylania remembers her entire childhood featuring parties of art making and fixing, scraping paint, sculpting wood, tiling floors, walls, bridges and art pieces, anything and everything. It was always about community, about building people up, she says, and over time as her father collected objects and local artworks dating back to 1880, the home became a living place of fascination and wonder. This was true not just for Lelania, but also for the wide-ranging cast of artists and characters who are only ever just a door knock away, wanting to visit with, speak to, or just be in the company of Hal Marcus. The house remains and it continues to be in active service as a fulcrum of community gathering. Currently, a quiet transformation is afoot, and between late 2027 and early 2028, that same house will open its doors as the privately run Hal Marcus Art Museum, celebrating his private collection of all El Paso artists, the support of whom Hal Marcus has given his life to. Hal Marcus was born in 1951 in El Paso, Texas. From a young age he was fascinated with the world and accompanied his grandmother on her weekly visits to the Juarez Market across the border. He loved the borderland, its landscapes and its peoples, its colours and its textures. It was the place, says longtime friend, co-author, and collaborator Luke Loenfield, that he developed his sense of colour. It was also the place he learned to be a successful merchant by watching his grandmother buy mangoes or avocados for a dime and selling them for a quarter in El Paso. The inspiration that came from those journeys and from being in another country, argues Loewenfield, was very powerful for Marcus, in particular because displacement gives us different ways of seeing ourselves and our common humanity. It was in high school that Hal Marcus decided that he would become an artist. It wasn't a desire, but a commitment. As a firstborn Jewish son in an Arab Jewish family, the expectation was that he would take over the family grocery business, but he had the necessary difficult conversation with his father and chose art instead. Every day since making that choice, Hal Marcus has made art. In the early years, his self-taught work was cubistic, taking shapes from the land before evolving into a more direct reflection and celebration of the environment in which he lived. El Paso in all its forms. There were folk style paintings of people, city scenes and landscapes, and there were also smaller works which he sold door to door across the city. It gave him an income, but it also gave him an opportunity to develop knowledge and experience of his community. The work began to be known and loved. People saw themselves reflected through an artistic eye that respectfully conveyed and celebrated the beauty of lives lived on the borderland. Hal's work is iconic in El Paso, says Loenfield. It can be seen in pretty much every office and home around town. On one occasion in his youth, Marcus took his worth work to an exhibition in San Antonio, but nobody attended the opening. In a quintessential Hal Marcus way, however, he determined to resolve the problem and told the gallery that as he had family in Houston, he could provide them as an audience. His plan was to drive to Houston and bring them back to see the show, which he did. On returning, however, the work had been taken down. It made him angry, and he vowed to return to El Paso and establish the kind of respectful gallery for local artists that would make them never have to look outside the city again. Little doubt that in El Paso's art scene, Hal Marcus was a defining, foundational figure who also happened to be highly identifiable thanks to his unflinching use of colourful shirts. Artists literally line up to speak of the influence Marcus has had on them and their work. For me, says Mauricio Mora, Hal has been a friend for thirty-five years, but even more than that, he has been a mentor. Daniel Padilla agrees that Marcus is an incredible advisor, adding that he was a father to me just as he has been to many El Paso artists. He helped me work on a style that would later, later on let people recognize me through my colours and my work and my subject matter, but he also influenced me as a person. Francisco Romero, for his part, speaks of Marc as an icon. He was a promoter of arts here in El Paso where such things didn't exist. He helped people without wanting anything in return and gave a voice to local artists, letting them know that they didn't have to leave to become an artist. He was a leader, and I consider him a guide. Hal Marcus was true to his word and set up that gallery in April nineteen ninety six, a one of a kind venue of union and celebration for local artists. Since the moment it opened its doors, it has been a beating heart for culture in El Paso, a gathering point, a refuge. Emphatically and unashamedly it is a unique place full of joy shaped by Marcus, alongside Leilania and his wife, Patricia Medici, brimming with the work of El Paso masters from history, innumerable living local artists and emerging talents. I wanted to create a space that felt like home for the community's imagination, said Marcus. Seeing the gallery become a place where people connect with our culture through colour has been the greatest masterpiece of my life. The gallery celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in April 2026. Hal Marcus has too many defining works to mention, but of all of them, perhaps the most iconic is El Paso Gracias a Dios. The work is a 9x11 foot thirteen panel painting marking the first record of Thanksgiving in the United States in April 1598. The artwork features the cultures that moved through El Paso del Norte and made the city what it is today, says Luke Loenfield. With the sun at the centre, the mural is filled with religious and historical figures that influence our border culture. It is a trademark, Hal Marcus Peace, displaying vibrant colours and reflecting what he saw in the borderlands, which was harmony, beauty, and a welcoming spirit, even if it's messy and hard. El Paso Gracias Ayos had been on display for over thirty years at the Chamisal National Memorial, but in July 2025 Marcus was contacted by a representative from Chamisal to withdraw the mural. There was never a formal contract, continues Loenfield, and that was the reason given for the removal. Hal suspected it was more than that. He sensed that the federal government's actions to remove divisive race centered ideology was being used as a reason to politicise and remove his work. It hit him very hard. He always felt artistic freedom to reflect to us in the borderlands what he saw. For his work to be seen as divisive or threatening was very hurtful, says Loenfield. Marcus tried to find a new home for the work with the city and the county without luck. He then asked Loenfield, by then a co-author with Marcus on a number of children's books, if he had any ideas. Loenfield, who also happens to be vice president of the Casa Ford in El Paso, asked Marcus if he would consider having it at the car dealership. He saw the open space, the large wall, and said that it would be a great home for his artwork. I'll never forget the day we went to Chamisal to pick up the mural. I followed Patricia as she whispered prayers of peace, and we were joined by the craftsman who originally built the custom frame. We laid out the pieces in the showroom at Casa Ford, just a few minutes from Chamisal, and moved on our hands and knees around the giant mural, securing each panel in place. Hal took over the showroom as a crowd gathered to hear the painter share the history of our region and his artistic representation. Hal Marcus was diagnosed with cancer that same summer. He was offered chemotherapy but told the doctors that they had the wrong guy. That there was no way that they were going to put poison in his body. My medicine is to do whatever I need to make me happy, said Marcus. To enjoy every single moment and to spend as much time in my studio. That's my medicine. Over the years Marcus had kept his vibrant shirts even after they were too weathered to continue wearing. He knew that somewhere down the line a moment would emerge in which they would become relevant. That the diagnosis was that moment. He had been saving his crazy shirts forever, said Lelania. He knew that one day he was going to do an art piece, and as is inevitable, the time came. It was a whole new style quilt on canvas. He was making the transition just as he was transitioning. On a warm late afternoon on april eighth, twenty twenty six, Marcus is at his gallery surrounded by artists, friends, family, and people who have come in off the street to see artwork, as they do every Wednesday of the year. He is a little more insistent then, directing the orchestra, giving everyone jobs. Soon I'll be able to tell you all what to do at the same time, he says. Marcus is undefeated. His chin still set high, he continues to look clearly ahead, no matter where the path might end, where the frontier lies. Hal Marcus, artist of the Borderlands, died in the early morning of Sunday, april twelfth, twenty twenty six. A man of conviction and of great inclusive humanity, a craftsman who understood that we all exist on the frontier, and that our communities are as strong as what we choose to build and who we choose to be, and that art is an essential, foundational tool in this construction.