Rockland, Maine, July 22, 2016 — Each year the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) presents a lecture by one of today’s most distinguished and entertaining voices in contemporary art. This year’s lecturer is artist Tucker Nichols. His lecture, entitled “I Don’t Know How Else To Say This,” will take place at 6:00 pm on Sunday, August 14 at CMCA on 21 Winter Street in Rockland. Tickets are $8 for CMCA members, $10 for non-members and can be purchased at cmcanow.org. Seating is limited to 100; reserve early.

Having spent summers on North Haven island his entire life, Nichols will discuss his time spent in Maine in relation to other artists who have painted along the Maine coast, providing examples that focus on the idea that art is a vague language for things we don’t know how to put into words. He will talk about his projects exploring the theme of making art as a way of thinking about and expressing thoughts and feelings that can not be achieved otherwise.

In her review of Nichols’ solo show at ZieherSmith gallery this summer, New York Times art critic Roberta Smith writes, “Tucker Nichols is multitalented. He draws, paints, sculpts, has collaborated on two children’s books and also writes quite well…Part of the modernity and joy of Mr. Nichols’s paintings is the suggestion that all the elements in a composition are autonomous…The pictures are all temporary arrangements that will scatter as soon as you look away. That they seem eager to do so is part of their strength.”

Nichols was born in Boston and is now based in Northern California. He received his BA in art history from Brown and MA in Chinese paintings from Yale. His work has been featured at the Drawing Center in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, Den Frie Museum in Copenhagen, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Nichols has also produced work for Facebook and Yahoo among others. His drawings have been published in McSweeney’s, The Thing Quarterly, Nieves Books and the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. He is co-author of the books, Crabtree (with Jon Nichols) and This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (with Dave Eggers). He is represented by ZieherSmith in New York and Gallery 16 in San Francisco. For more information on Nichols, visit www.tuckernichols.com.

For more information on all of CMCA’s programs and events, visit www.cmcanow.org.

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Above: Artist Tucker Nichols