In its next installment, the President’s Colleagues of Dixie State University meeting series will present DSU art professor and renowned artist Del Parson as the featured speaker.  

Parson will present at noon on Feb. 4 in Lecture Hall 156 of Dixie State’s Russell C. Taylor Health Science Center, located on the Dixie Regional Medical Center campus at 1526 East Medical Center Drive. The meeting is free and open to the public.

For the past 40 years, Parson has been painting professionally and producing art work for top national galleries, print companies and public, religious and private institutions. He has received public and critical acclaim and won numerous national and regional painting awards. Additionally, millions of prints have been made of his images. Some of his most well-known images are the more than 200 works he has painted for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially those depicting the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

Parson grew up in Rexburg, Idaho, where his father, who was head of the Art Department at Ricks College, often took his nine children on painting excursions and campouts. Parson found his father’s love of art to be contagious, as did two of his brothers, who became artists as well. Parson went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Brigham Young University. 

He counts among his most fulfilling accomplishments the students whom he has taught over his 30-year career at Dixie State, many of whom have gone on to their own professional art careers. 

The President’s Colleagues meeting series will continue on March 4 in the Taylor Health Science Center with a presentation by Karl Snow, who served in the Utah State Senate from 1973 to 1984. The President’s Colleagues of DSU, established more than 20 years ago by former DSU President Douglas Alder, is a group of retired professors and other professionals. Alder, who also started DSU’s Honors Program, organized the group as a way to increase academic activities on campus.