Artist, born 1972 in Takoradi, Ghana

Kobina Nyarko is not a traditional marine painter. He is a chronicler, a collector, and a witness to slow disappearance. His works are filled with fish — moving, swarming, layered in color. At first glance, they may look decorative. In truth, they are visual archives. An attempt to preserve what is vanishing beneath the surface.

Nyarko grew up on the shores of the Atlantic. As a child, the ocean was not a subject — it was a presence. In the 1990s, he began painting with oils, soon developing his signature motif: schools of fish, vibrant and rhythmic, drawn from life underwater. But over time, the waters changed. Where there was movement, there was plastic. Where there was life, there was waste.

Today, Nyarko collects plastic washed ashore. He sorts, cleans, and cuts it — then uses it as paint. In works like The Rainbow in the Atlantic Ocean, bright fragments of bottle caps, wrappers, and fishing nets form luminous compositions with a bitter subtext: beauty despite threat. Color as warning.

He speaks of painting from the eye of a shark. Of not just portraying the ocean, but defending it. His art is a calling. Not loud — but unmistakable.

Plastic is no longer waste in his studio. It is evidence. And sometimes — a bearer of hope. In his community, Nyarko creates incentives for others to collect plastic. Waste becomes material. Material becomes message. The message becomes awareness.

Kobina Nyarko sees himself as the voice of the ocean.
His work asks: What can we still see — before it disappears?
And: What will we make of what remains?