Cover image: Childhood home of the artist, San Jose, Arizona
Hal Empie Gallery
This is an artist born in the Territory of Arizona over one hundred years ago! Hal Empie (1909-2002). Visit his gallery in Tubac today! We’ll share the family’s Arizona history since 1886. Learn about Hal Empie’s three parallel careers as a professional artist, cartoonist, and pharmacist. Enjoy the gallery and tour the artist’s studio! Honored by Arizona Highways as one of their top favorite places to visit in the state. Hal Empie paintings have sold for over ninety years.
Original Oils, watercolors, framed Empie cartoons, canvas giclée, signed limited edition prints, notes and books. Private showings, tours, and speaker on request. Call for gallery hours and private appointments (520) 398-2811. Visit original artwork, canvas giclées, and limited editions prints here.
Empie Kartoon-Kards
Although Hal Empie is best known and highly regarded for his fine art – paintings that portrayed the beauty, people and places of the American Southwest – there was a while when he tapped into his comedic talent by adding cartoons to his portfolio. Pen to paper, no one illustrated the humorous side of life like Arizona’s Hal Empie. Welcome to Way Out West.
Empie Kartoon Kards are the first copyright for western cartoon postcards of its kind. Arizona’s territorial native Hal Empie originated these designs during the early 1930s in Duncan, Arizona.You’ll recognize drawings by Hal Empie appearing as early as 1936 in such publications as Arizona Highways. Before Mr. Empie elected to devote his love of art full time to oil painting, his famous Kartoon Kards had become an Arizona legend. They sold throughout the world for over thirty years with retail accounts in 38 states.The original pen and ink drawings of the cartoons are preserved in permanent collections at both the Special Collection Research Center at Syracuse, University Library, New York and the largest cartoon museum in the world, The Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum and Library in Columbus, Ohio. Actual vintage Empie Kartoon Kards postcards are archived with the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian.
Tubac Chamber of Commerce Gold Member 2023-2024
