Climbing Up, 24" x 36"

See more paintings at the Glorious Brushstrokes Collection.

James Nowak’s Climbing Up, part of his Glorious Brushstrokes Collection, is a powerful study of momentum, color, and aspiration. Through bold, gestural strokes and a vibrant palette, Nowak constructs an abstract narrative that speaks to struggle, growth, and the ceaseless drive toward elevation—both physical and metaphorical.

The painting’s compositional energy is immediately striking. Rich greens dominate the canvas, interlaced with bold strokes of red, orange, and cobalt blue. The colors are applied with purposeful dynamism, creating an upward thrust that gives the work its sense of directionality.

• Color Dynamics: The greens suggest vitality, nature, and resilience. Red and orange introduce tension, representing moments of difficulty or resistance along the ascent. Blue functions as a grounding presence, evoking both skyward openness and internal steadiness. Yellow, bright and luminous, punctuates the composition with sparks of hope and breakthrough.
• Brushwork: Nowak’s brushstrokes are vigorous and layered, resembling both climbing motions and obstacles. The upward diagonals and intersecting marks mimic the act of climbing itself—step, reach, pause, and push forward.
• Spatial Arrangement: Unlike the dispersed rhythm of Forest Blue or the explosive bursts of Fireworks, Climbing Up organizes its forms in a way that suggests motion through resistance. The blank white ground provides intervals of rest, functioning like spaces between footholds on a wall.

The title Climbing Up anchors the work in metaphor. It can be read as a reflection on personal growth, ambition, and resilience. The layering of vibrant strokes over an open ground suggests the perseverance required to ascend toward one’s goals, with setbacks (the darker, denser marks) countered by moments of progress (the luminous yellows and lighter blues).

Beyond personal struggle, the painting may also symbolize collective progress. The overlapping strokes, often blending and intersecting, imply cooperation and entanglement—suggesting that no climb is entirely individual. The tension between harmony and friction mirrors the shared challenges of human endeavor.

Within the Glorious Brushstrokes Collection, Climbing Up occupies a conceptual space between the exuberant explosiveness of Fireworks and the meditative immersion of Forest Blue. It blends the intensity of color with an underlying narrative of effort, growth, and resilience. Where Fireworks celebrates brilliance and Forest Blue explores immersion, Climbing Up narrates struggle and aspiration. This positions the work as one of the most overtly metaphorical pieces in the collection.

Critically, Climbing Up demonstrates Nowak’s ability to balance expressive abstraction with thematic clarity. Its strength lies in the directional force of the composition, which guides the viewer’s eye upward, creating both visual and psychological momentum. Some may argue that the abstraction risks ambiguity, but the evocative title offers an interpretive framework that enriches rather than limits meaning. The painting succeeds in allowing viewers to reflect on their own struggles, ambitions, and upward journeys.

Climbing Up is an abstract meditation on perseverance and aspiration. James Nowak uses vibrant brushstrokes and a dynamic palette to construct a visual metaphor for growth—an ongoing climb marked by obstacles, breakthroughs, and resilience. As part of the Glorious Brushstrokes Collection, it adds a narrative dimension to the series, reminding viewers that progress is as much about process as it is about achievement.