Chick Butcher doesn’t particularly enjoy talking about his art.

As co-owner of Kiama’s SEVENMARKS Gallery with his wife Cobi, and good friends Nina and Cesar, he’s had to become more comfortable speaking about his work - but even now, he admits he’d still prefer to let the pieces speak for themselves.

His upcoming solo exhibition, Where Thoughts Settle, opens on Saturday (12 July) as a highlight of the Kiama Winter Festival, and you’ll likely find him quietly hiding out somewhere away from the crowd.

It’s not shyness so much as a firm belief: the material is the language. For Chick, if words could carry what he wanted to express, he wouldn’t be in the studio at all.

“Why would I make the work if I could express it in words? I’d be writing poetry or theses on art. But my language is my material,” he says.

That material is constantly shifting, though Chick’s thematic compass has remained steady for over 20 years: mortality, memory, deterioration. His practice evolves, but the undercurrent remains the same.

“You could throw a blanket over my themes for the last two decades. The work changes, but the ideas are always there.”

In Where Thoughts Settle, Chick reintroduces timber to his work - an early love from his time at the Sturt School for Wood - blending it with his now-signature use of glass and steel. 

The timber in these new works is burned, marked, and handled piece by piece, hinting at decay, memory, and repetition. This new work is also inspired by Australian artists like, in particular Sidney Nolan ‘Drought Series’ and Rosalie Gascoigne sculptural assemblages.

The opening night of Where Thoughts Settle will be a highlight of the Kiama Winter Festival.

“The work I used to make could have come from anywhere in the world. But this work feels rooted in this place. It carries my understanding of here.”

Among the centrepieces of the show are slabs of dense black kiln-formed glass, some weighing over 45 kilograms and taking more than two months to complete. 

Chick uses glass not for its shine or clarity, but for its depth - black glass, so dark it almost absorbs light.

“You don’t get that depth of black in painting. Not many materials can hold that. Glass carries something else and the polishing - it’s cerebral, physical,” he explains.

One major wall piece features dozens of blackened timber pillars, each one slightly different, disrupted by fragments of that polished black glass. 

The work seems to chart a lifetime: days marked by repetition, punctuated by flashing moments of clarity or reflection or perfection.

That may be this writer’s reading - but that’s the point.

“I don’t like to explain the work too much. I want people to see what they need to see,” says Chick. “The people who spend time with it usually get something. And that’s enough.”

Where Thoughts Settle runs from 12 July to 23 August 2025 at SEVENMARKS Gallery in Kiama. Drop in on opening night and if you do happen to catch him, maybe talk to him about the process - not the meaning.