Fly Away

In Fly Away, part of James Nowak’s Windows Collection, the artist departs from gestural abstraction into a language of sharp geometries and saturated planes. The title suggests freedom, release, or transcendence, but here it is reframed not through fluid brushwork but through interlocking angular forms. The composition evokes a sense of propulsion, as though fragments of color and shape were breaking free from containment, soaring outward in dynamic flight.

The canvas is dominated by a constellation of overlapping triangles rendered in primary and high-contrast tones—red, yellow, black, and blue. The geometry is crisp, defined by flat fields of color rather than expressive strokes. The forms jut against one another, creating a sense of collision and expansion. Unlike organic compositions, this painting relies on tension between diagonals, where every line points toward motion and escape.

The layering of triangles creates depth and a fractured spatial field. Red shards slice across the canvas like jets of energy, while yellow planes anchor the middle ground. Black triangles provide weight and grounding, preventing the composition from dissipating into chaos, while the blue background functions as sky, atmosphere, and infinite openness.

The chromatic scheme heightens the sense of vitality. Red dominates with urgency and forward thrust, suggesting propulsion and force. Yellow introduces luminosity and optimism, tempering the aggression of red with a sense of lightness. Black interjects solidity and tension, its heaviness contrasting with the buoyant hues. Blue provides both stability and expansiveness, operating as the field into which these shapes “fly away.”

Together, the palette evokes both danger and exhilaration—a flight that is not serene but charged with energy and risk.

Conceptually, Fly Away can be read as an allegory of escape through fragmentation. The rigid triangles suggest confinement, yet their diagonal thrusts imply movement outward, a breaking from boundaries. Unlike Nowak’s gestural works in the New Works Collection, this piece emphasizes freedom through sharpness, precision, and collision.

The “window” metaphor of the collection title also resonates: these triangles resemble shards of glass, as if a window has been broken open to allow flight. The painting becomes a symbolic threshold—freedom achieved not through dissolution but through rupture.

In contrast to the gestural dynamism of his 2025 New Works Collection, the Windows Collection foregrounds geometry, flatness, and hard-edge abstraction. Fly Away demonstrates Nowak’s versatility: his ability to approach similar themes of movement, release, and vitality through entirely different visual languages. The angular sharpness of this work situates it in dialogue with Constructivism and Hard-Edge Painting, but reenergized for a contemporary context.

Conclusion

Fly Away from the Windows Collection captures freedom as rupture, propulsion, and angular force. Through its jagged geometries and high-contrast palette, the painting redefines flight as an act of breaking through barriers—an escape born not of fluid drift but of decisive fracture. It stands as a testament to James Nowak’s range as an abstract painter, showing how different formal vocabularies can carry forward his persistent concern with rhythm, energy, and release.