The Colonial Beach artist who inspired others with her determination to continue painting — even after she’d had a stroke and moved into a long-term care facility — will be remembered Friday.
Friends and fellow artists will gather at JarrettThor Fine Arts in town and share stories about Evelyn “Ebbie” Hynson, who died on May 27, 2024. She was 104 and still painting well past her 100th birthday — when people gathered at the beach for fireworks in her honor.
“Everybody here loved Ebbie and is sorry that she’s gone,” said Carl Thor, owner of JarrettThor gallery, where her work was displayed for about 15 years. “She certainly deserves a good sendoff.”
Some of Hynson’s oil paintings will be available for sale with proceeds donated to her “beloved” Colonial Beach Artists Guild, Thor said. The gallery is at 100 Taylor St., #101, and the event starts at 7 p.m. It’s part of the Second Friday Art Walk.
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Andrea Clement, a fellow Colonial Beach artist and former town council member, always loved the stories that Hynson shared about her landscapes, portraits or still-life paintings.
“She would tell you how the flowers would sing to her or when the onion said to put some more shade over here,” Clement said. “Even when she went into the nursing home, she wanted her art with her, she never wanted to stop painting.”
Clement finds comfort in Hynson’s example, that she didn’t believe a person had to stop making art when she reached a certain age or when “you finally grow up and stop playing with paint.”
“She still had the love, still had the joy of painting,” Clement said. “She made me feel like I could paint until the last day.”
In a 2018 story in The Free Lance–Star, a spry 98-year-old Hynson talked about her lifelong interest in art. She didn’t get to pursue formal classes as a child or younger adult, but she always found a way to express herself, whether she copied cartoon characters onto her jackets or worked in chalk or oil.
A native of Washington, D.C., she had worked for the United Mine Workers for 25 years, then she and her late husband, Sammy, retired to Westmoreland County.
She enjoyed flowers, peaceful forest scenes and images from the fishing trips she and her husband enjoyed, and she regularly visited the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland.
When she was in her 70s, the vistas she loved in retirement started appearing on canvas. She was a master of precision in those days, Thor recalled, “a very careful painter.”
And wherever she went, she wore the flowered bonnets that became her trademark.
When the Colonial Beach Artists Guild was being formed, about 2003, Hynson told founding member Kathy Waltermire “that if it wasn’t oil painting, it wasn’t art.”
Waltermire said it took a while, but fellow artists convinced her that other media could also be art-worthy.
“She was respected by so many,” Waltermire said.
Kathy Moran, current president of the guild, called her a legend in town. She said an award will be named in Hynson’s honor during the upcoming Potomac River Regional Art Show.
Hynson had to move into the Westmoreland Rehabilitation and Healthcare facility after a stroke in 2012, and she brought all her supplies with her. Fans quickly noticed that her style had changed after she lost the use of her left hand.
“She couldn’t quite comprehend the lines anymore,” Thor said.
She would leave a third of the canvas white or put a lake on top of a mountain. Still, the results were beautiful, he said.
Kathryn Murray, another artist whose work is displayed at Thor’s gallery, said during Hynson’s 100th birthday party that she much preferred Hynson’s post-stroke paintings because they leave the viewer more room for interpretation.
Hynson herself said there was nothing she’d rather do in the latter years of her life than wheel herself into the activities room of the Westmoreland facility and unlock her art supplies. Then, she’d work for hours at a time in the quiet of the night, when everyone else was sleeping.
“Most people live for dying, but the artist lives for living,” she said. “The artist is always looking for something because they want to show life.”
Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
