Here's something that really gets to me. We have about 25.3 million metric tons of plastic waste that's already in our oceans. Nearly two-thirds of that can't even be tracked anymore. Think about that for a second. We've literally lost track of most of the plastic we've dumped into the sea.
When I'm painting seascapes now, I can't ignore this reality. The water isn't just water anymore. The ocean has become this complex mixture where microplastics which are floating around, getting smaller and smaller, working their way into everything. Even if we stopped all plastic pollution today, those microplastics would keep increasing because the stuff that's already out there keeps breaking down.
Why Do River Mouths Make Ocean Plastic Worse?
Living near a river mouth, you see how everything upstream ends up on your beach. After every big storm, I'm out there looking at plastic bottles, bags, food containers. There is all kinds of stuff that has traveled down from who knows where. Rivers are basically highways for trash, carrying waste from inland towns straight to the ocean.
That's actually where a lot of hope lies though. If we can stop waste from getting into rivers in the first place, we can make a huge difference in ocean pollution. It's more manageable than trying to clean up the entire ocean after the fact.
How Can Art Make Environmental Issues More Real?
When I was working on "Plastic Tide," I kept thinking about how to make this invisible problem visible. You can read statistics all day. But what I hope I did in this painting is to show the fragmented surface. And the way the paint breaks apart and reforms, mimicking how plastic debris moves on the water and lays on the beach. Reality doesn't hit you the same way.
The color palette in this piece reflects what I actually see on the beach. Those muted grays and blues mixed with unexpected odd colors? That is what pollution looks like. It's not dramatic in an obvious way, but it's constantly there, changing the fundamental character of the seascape.
Can We Actually Solve the Plastic Ocean Problem?
I stay optimistic about this. But the numbers are scary, but I've seen how quickly things can change when people pay attention. Better waste management systems, more reusable alternatives to single-use plastics, and just getting people to understand what's really happening. These aren't impossible goals.
The key is stopping new plastic from entering the system while we figure out how to deal with what's already out there. Every time I paint a seascape now, I'm documenting both the problem and the possibility. The ocean is resilient, but it needs our help.
What Does Environmental Art Actually Accomplish?
Art has this unique ability to make abstract problems concrete. When someone looks at "Plastic Tide," they're not just seeing a painting. Hopefully they are seeing a translation of environmental information into something they can feel emotionally. Hopefully it becomes personal to the viewer..
As artists, we're witnesses. We' watch, record, and respond to what we see. Sometimes that means celebrating beauty, and sometimes it means confronting ugly truths. Both are necessary if we want art to mean something other than decoration on the wall.
