The ocean has always been the ultimate muse, inspiring artists to capture its terror, beauty, and mystery for centuries. As of December 2025, the world of "art about the sea" is undergoing a profound transformation, moving far beyond traditional seascapes to embrace environmental activism, cutting-edge digital technology, and innovative materials. This shift reflects a global reckoning with climate change, making the newest works not just beautiful, but critically important.

The contemporary marine art movement is defined by a sense of urgency, with major exhibitions like the Rising Tides theme at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum and the Schaefer International Marine Art Exhibition showcasing how artists are interpreting humanity's intricate relationship with water. This guide explores the seven most powerful and current trends dominating galleries and digital platforms, proving that the sea remains the most dynamic subject in the art world.

The New Environmental Canvas: Art as Ocean Activism

The most significant and topical trend in contemporary marine art is the direct use of the ocean’s waste as a medium. This movement turns pollution into powerful statements, transforming discarded materials into vivid, often heartbreaking, representations of marine ecosystems. The intention is clear: to use the visceral reality of plastic waste to force a conversation about oceanic health and conservation.

1. The Rise of Recycled Ocean Plastic Sculpture

Artists are now literally pulling their materials from the water. This technique is a powerful form of environmental activism, bypassing traditional painting or sculpting materials in favor of discarded plastic, fishing nets, and ocean debris. These works are not merely abstract; they are meticulous reconstructions of the life being threatened by the waste itself.

• Federico Uribe's "Plastic Reef": This Miami-based artist creates immersive, vibrant marine ecosystems entirely constructed from recycled plastic. His "Plastic Reef" installations are a stunning, yet terrifying, commentary on the substitution of natural beauty with man-made trash.
• Tess Felix's Portraits: Marin-based artist Tess Felix creates striking portraits and sculptures, often of human figures, using plastic collected from nearby beaches. Her work transforms the trash into a medium for human connection and responsibility.
• Mandy Barker's Photography: A different approach is taken by photographer Mandy Barker, whose series like Hong Kong Soup: 1826 features visually stunning, yet disturbing, images of plastic debris gathered from the ocean. Her work uses aesthetic beauty to highlight the scale of the plastic crisis.
• Erub Arts: This collective is renowned for its innovative use of recycled materials, particularly ghost nets, to create large-scale textile sculptures of marine animals, blending traditional craft with modern activism.

The message is amplified by projects like Bottled Ocean 2123, an immersive installation that imagines a future ocean landscape crafted entirely from recycled materials, forcing viewers to confront a potential dystopian reality.

The Digital Tide: AI and Video Art Seascapes

The sea is also making massive waves in the digital realm. The barrier between traditional painting and technology is dissolving, with artists exploring the ocean's fluid nature through new, dynamic mediums like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and video art. This trend satisfies a contemporary hunger for unique, personalized visual experiences.

2. AI-Generated Underwater Worlds

AI art generators like Midjourney and DALL-E have made "ocean art" accessible and infinitely customizable. Artists and creators are using sophisticated prompts to generate compelling, educational, and sometimes surreal underwater seascapes without the need for traditional equipment or risky deep-sea shoots.

• AI Mermaid/Merman Filters: A viral social media trend involves using AI filters to transform subjects into mythological ocean beings, showcasing a popular fascination with the sea's mysteries and the ability of AI to instantly create high-fantasy marine-themed avatars.
• Coastal Aesthetics in AI Video: There is a growing niche for AI video art that focuses on "coastal aesthetics," creating calming, abstract, or hyper-realistic visuals of waves, tides, and beach scenes, often for digital content and virtual environments.

These digital works allow for endless experimentation with artistic styles and filters that highlight the water's movement and light in ways a static canvas cannot, pushing the boundaries of what marine art can be.

The Enduring Legacy: Sea as Metaphor and Masterpiece

While new trends emerge, the tradition of using the sea as a powerful, often psychological, metaphor remains central. Contemporary masters are reinterpreting the classic seascape not just as a view, but as a reflection of the human condition—exploring themes of flux, terror, and sublime beauty.

3. The Sea as Psychological Landscape

Major exhibitions in 2024 and 2025 highlight artists who use the ocean to explore deep human experiences, reflecting on the "beauties and terrors of the ocean" and the experiences of those who have "lived and lost their lives" among its waves.

• Anselm Kiefer's Retrospective: Kiefer's exhibition, Becoming the Sea, uses the river and the sea as a metaphor for the flux of life, change, and destruction, demonstrating how the ocean acts as a monumental, philosophical subject in contemporary art.
• Dana Schutz's Subjects: The 2024 exhibition The Sea and All Its Subjects by Dana Schutz further exemplifies this trend, showcasing the ocean as a complex space that holds both life and death, reflecting contemporary anxieties and narratives.

4. The Revival of Maritime Realism and Historical Context

Traditional maritime art, focusing on ships, naval history, and the power of the open water, is far from obsolete. Prestigious institutions continue to champion realism and historical accuracy, but with a modern sensibility.

• Schaefer International Marine Art Exhibition: This annual event, running through October 2025, continues to be a crucial showcase for the best in contemporary marine art, gathering and recognizing new contributions from around the world.
• The Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA): Their Annual Exhibition, which includes the work of non-members alongside established artists, remains a benchmark for high-quality, contemporary marine realism and impressionism.

Influential artists in this space, such as John Stobart, Christopher Blossom, and James Gurney, continue to inspire new generations with their technical mastery and deep respect for nautical history and the ocean's raw power.

5. The Enduring Power of Light and Water

The technical challenge of capturing light on water remains a core focus. The enduring popularity of artists like Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, whose exhibition runs into March 2025, highlights the timeless appeal of artists who master the shimmering, translucent qualities of the sea. His work influences a contemporary wave of artists who prioritize the impressionistic capture of movement and light.

6. New Materials: Resin and Epoxy Seascapes

A popular decorative and fine art trend involves using epoxy resin to create hyper-realistic, three-dimensional representations of waves, tides, and underwater scenes. This technique allows for stunning depth and transparency, mimicking the look of real water and creating an immersive, tactile experience for the viewer. This is often paired with natural elements like sand and shells to blur the line between art and nature.

7. Thematic Focus on "Rising Tides" and Climate Change

The overarching theme uniting many of these trends is the focus on global water issues. The Rising Tides theme for the 2025 exhibition at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum explicitly invites an exploration of humanity's relationship with water, signaling a broader institutional and artistic commitment to addressing climate change, sea-level rise, and coastal vulnerability. This intention ensures that "art about the sea" remains a relevant and powerful driver of social commentary.

In conclusion, the art world's fascination with the sea is richer and more complex than ever before. From the stark, activist sculptures of recycled plastic to the ethereal, algorithm-generated seascapes of AI, the ocean has become a canvas for both beauty and crucial commentary. The works of contemporary masters and emerging artists alike are challenging viewers to see the sea not just as a beautiful vista, but as a threatened, vital entity that reflects our own future.