Swirling, 30" x 40"

See more paintings at The Glorious Brushstrokes Collection.

In Swirling, James Nowak continues his exploration of energy, motion, and emotion within the Glorious Brushstrokes Collection. Where earlier works like Electricity thrive on chaotic intersections and Summer Flowers on luminous blossoming, Swirling embodies a more circular, dance-like momentum. The composition captures the sensation of being caught in motion—pulled into a current that is both rhythmic and unpredictable.

The painting features wide, sweeping strokes of deep blue, green, yellow, and red, layered in interwoven arcs and diagonals. The brushstrokes are looser and more curvilinear than in Nowak’s sharper works, giving the canvas a sense of spiraling rhythm. Unlike rigid grids or clashing diagonals, the strokes here bend and weave, creating the impression of a vortex in motion.

Color plays an essential role in sustaining this swirling dynamic. Blue anchors the painting with cool stability, while green provides a sense of natural balance. Yellow bursts into the composition with flashes of brightness, while red punctuates the piece with urgency and warmth. Together, the palette evokes both tension and harmony—the paradox of swirling motion, which can be exhilarating or destabilizing depending on perspective.

Thematically, Swirling can be read as a meditation on cycles—emotional, natural, and existential. The intertwining strokes suggest the endless revolutions of life: growth and decline, chaos and order, excitement and unease. The composition feels simultaneously liberating and entrapping, embodying the dual nature of being swept up in forces larger than oneself.

The title further emphasizes the sense of movement without destination. Unlike works that build toward climax or resolution, Swirling suggests continuity, a process without end. In this sense, the work mirrors human experience—life as an ongoing spiral of energy, never static, never fully resolved.

His work also resonates with lyrical abstraction, where emotion and sensation take precedence over representation. By titling the work Swirling, Nowak bridges sensory perception with conceptual metaphor, offering both a physical and psychological reading.

Critically, Swirling may be understood as an exploration of human emotion in flux. The strokes embody not only literal motion but also the inner turbulence of thought, desire, and memory. The layering of colors suggests multiple voices or energies moving in relation to one another, never settling but always interacting.

The work resists stillness, challenging the viewer to embrace instability as a condition of life. The viewer’s eye is pulled in continuous motion across the canvas, unable to rest, mirroring the way lived experience rarely offers clarity or pause.

editation on motion, cycles, and the energy of existence. Through bold brushstrokes, vivid colors, and rhythmic composition, the work captures the vitality and turbulence of life as a never-ending swirl. As part of the Glorious Brushstrokes Collection, it reveals Nowak’s ability to distill universal human experience into pure abstraction, offering a canvas that both energizes and unsettles—an eternal dance of movement without end.