DANBURY, CONN. — Artist and educator Don Kimes, recognized internationally for his mastery of diverse media ranging from realist landscape paintings to metal sculptures and mixed-media collages, will discuss his works and artistic philosophy on Tuesday, Jan. 23, as the lead-off speaker in the spring semester slide lecture series presented by Western Connecticut State University’s Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) program.

Kimes’ lecture is the first of nine presentations by visiting artists scheduled in the Tuesday morning series continuing through May 8. All events will be free and the public is invited to attend.

Lectures sponsored by the WestConn M.F.A. program from January through April will be at 11 a.m. in Viewing Room 1 of White Hall on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. Painter Robert Berlind will conclude the series when he presents the Weir Farm Lecture at 11 a.m. on May 8 at Weir Farm Art Center, 736 Nod Hill Road in Wilton.

Kimes’ paintings, collages, prints and multi-media steel sculptures have been shown in more than 30 solo and 100 group exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as in Italy, Germany and Mexico. Twice he has been named recipient of the Medici Medal at the Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art. He previously was program director at the New York Studio School; currently he serves as head of the graduate painting divisions at American University in Washington, D.C., and as artistic director at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, N.Y.

Other lectures in the M.F.A. spring semester series will be:

• Feb. 6: Cathleen Toelke. Toelke has gained recognition for artwork featured on the covers of best-selling novels by authors including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Oscar Hiluelos, as well as her mural-scale oil painting shown in the lobby of The Millennium Hotel in New York City. Her paintings, known for their distinctive, sculptural figures,  have received critical acclaim in Print Magazine, American Illustration, Graphics Design and other professional publications.
• Feb. 20: Paul Smith. Recipient of a Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant, Smith has exhibited his paintings in New York, Delaware and New Mexico, as well as in Sweden, Denmark and India. For the past 20 years, his art reviews have been featured regularly in the national monthly magazine Art in America.
• Feb. 27: Daniel Dos Santos. A 2000 graduate with high honors of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Dos Santos maintains a studio in Shelton where he pursues art projects for a growing list of corporate clients including Scholastic Books, Penguin Books, GE Engines/Boeing Aircraft and The Greenwich Workshop.
• March 6: Brenda Garand. Recipient of grants from the Fulbright, Marion and Jasper Whiting, and Andrew W. Mellon foundations, Garand has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Academy Museum and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She currently serves as chair of the studio art department at Dartmouth College. Her works use a mix of steel, fabric and paper media to suggest simultaneous qualities of frailty and strength in her works.
• March 27: Joan Chiverton. The daughter of Works Progress Administration social realist artist Albert Pels, Chiverton developed her unique style of illustration as a student of her father and other leading New York artists of the mid-20th century. Her professional work as an illustrator, graphic designer and creative director has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other publications, and has appeared widely in corporate ad campaigns. She has won numerous advertising and marketing awards including top prizes in the annual One Show, Addy, Nori and American Marketing Association competitions.
• April 10: Stanley Lewis. Lewis has built a national reputation as a landscape painter whose works graphically convey his personal vision and the struggle of artistic creation, and as a respected educator and visiting artist who has taught at more than a dozen leading colleges and art schools in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions. A former Danforth and Guggenheim fellow, he exhibits widely throughout the United States.
• April 24: Jerry Pinkney. In a career spanning more than four decades, Pinkney has illustrated more than 100 children’s books published in 11 languages and 14 countries. His work has earned uncommon recognition as a five-time recipient of both the Caldecott Honor Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award, and a four-time winner of the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. He has staged more than 30 solo exhibitions of his work, including a show at the Art Institute of Chicago, and participated in more than 100 group exhibitions worldwide. President Bush named Pinkney to the National Council for the Arts in 2003.
• May 8: Robert Berlind. A graduate of Yale and Columbia universities, Berlind has developed a personal style of painting that combines abstraction with realism, evoking an interplay between his work’s artistic interpretation of light and movement and the reality of the natural world. He has exhibited widely across the United States during the past three decades, and won critical acclaim and honors including an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Berlind’s talk will be sponsored by the Weir Farm Art Center, host for the lecture.

For more information, call the M.F.A. program office at (203) 837-8881.