Nowakowski's compositions are bold and monumental. He avoids to many details but his combinations of color are clear, sometimes even expressively sharp. On the other hand, effects of atmosphere, light, and space are subtly nuanced. The pictures in the "Moods" series really may be regarded as "abstract" art, but it is the result not of some speculative aesthetics but rather of a deliberate attempt to portray light and stillness (motionless) in isolation from all other objects. They are somehow similar to the Funeral Symphony,1903, by Lithuanian Symbolist painter, M. K. Ciurlionis (1875-1911), a cycle of seven pastels, where he showed both the existential fate of all mankind and individual grief in the void left behind. Like Ciurlionis' cycle Nowakowski's "Moods" are precisely composed as musical themes, as mourning symphonies. An important role in the structure of their series is played by certain plastic components, which provide a narrative unity: the changing and recurrent directions of the shapes, the delicate modulation of light and color. The "Moods" could remind also about one of the greatest Italian Futurist painters, Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), whose "Those Who Stay", 1911, were deeply influenced by Symbolism. This strange, allegorical drawing, showing a procession of angels with the fallen wings in the dream-sleep-like city has an extreme lyricism and ability to show sensations and "states of soul" of the artist. When I saw Dareks paintings for the first time, my thoughts went straight to the "mood" paintings, often pure landscapes, sometimes landscapes with figures, of Swiss-born artist, Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901). His the most celebrated, and my favorite, "The Island Of The Dead", 1880, called by the artist, as a picture for dreaming over, " with its unbelievable radiating mystery made an immense impression on my youth, an impression which is still present today.It was the same with Nowakowski's paintings. They do not depict nature as it actually exists, but rather bring impressions, which create a new and different world, "governed" by its own subjective mood. The mood here is one of withdrawal, of rejection of reality. The viewer does not really know, if he is looking at the strange, forgotten megalith sites, offering altars, cemetery passages, the cypresses, or colonnades filled with unusual red and yellow light. Light, being a radiant mass in the midst of the surrounding darkness. Nowakowski is here close to the mystical theories of color of the German Romantic artist, Philip Otto Runge (1777-1810). He wrote in one of his letters that color is the last art that always will be an enigma. It is as an enigma of Trinity. Therefore, could these luminous colors in Darek's paintings be an attempt to show his mystical or philosophical meditations? Only the artist knows the answer and I am sure that it would be no less enigmatic than his strange but wonderful works. Works that give the viewers a particular delights by their exceptional sincerity, their authentic dream-like appearance, and their profound spiritual content. Even though his "dreaming" paintings, full of fantastic and visionary tendencies, enigmatic and imaginative, could remind the viewer of the work of Symbolists of XIX/XX century with their mood, they are still works of extraordinary originality with their almost divine melancholy and unearthly sadness.                                                                                        J. K. K