The notion of "abstract art" is often used in the contemporary discourse with a meaning close to the notion of "non-figurative art". If an abstract image presupposes that the artists starts from a real subject, which they then distort (to abstraction) according to their own aesthetic taste, bringing the original object even to the point where it can no longer be recognized, the non- figurative images do not start from any model: they are only shapes and colors, pure invention, in which nothing must be recognized.

A viewer who is not familiar with the title of the painting can confuse Eva Cerbu's work with a non-figurative work, composed of sinuous shapes and various textures with an expressive role. But the work has a reference: the storm and the sea and, not coincidentally, artists like William Turner, who forced the limit of abstracting form long before abstract art was popular or acceptable, had a preference for seascapes.

Due to the title, the ship on the sea "appears" in the eyes of the viewer; It becomes a recognizable object, as the human brain tries to recognize familiar shapes in any context, it can, so that even in the works of one of the most famous modern abstract artists, Kandinsky, many viewers "see" recognizable shapes, even where there aren’t any, like the boat from the work Small dream in red.