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BOOKS. ARTWORK. ARCHIVE. MYTH
A living archive of books, images, myths, and objects by Marcelo Halmenschlager.
About the Artist
Bio
Marcelo Halmenschlager (b. 1978) is a Brazilian-American artist and writer working in oil, charcoal, and text. Raised in southern Brazil, he carries its fog-lit ranges and Pampas into images where landscape rarely stays landscape for long. A hillside becomes a threshold. A remembered object acquires its own folklore. A drawing begins to behave as evidence of an event that may never have occurred. Now based in Nashville, Halmenschlager moves between painting, drawing, fiction, and artist books, using the studio as a kind of dimensional archaeology. His work returns to memory not to preserve it intact, but to discover what it has become after years of burial, invention, and retelling.
Process & Medium
Oil and charcoal do most of the physical work in Marcelo’s studio. Oil suits his habit of changing an image while he is making it: forms can be buried, recovered, glazed over, or pushed from realism toward abstraction. He’s drawn to its depth, its patience, and its capacity for revision. Charcoal, by contrast, is messy in execution but pure in substance, a contradiction he welcomes. That tension, clean and dirty at once, runs through the work itself, where images keep moving between the concrete and the symbolic.
Commission inquiries
Much of my portrait and animal work begins as a request and develops through collaboration. I accept a small number of commissions in oil or charcoal, including portraits and figurative work. I’m also open to surreal reinterpretations. To inquire, include the subject, preferred size, timeline, and any reference images. If needed, I can help develop suitable reference material. Live sittings and a simple photo session are available for select commissions, by arrangement.
