Watson and the Shark

“Watson and the Shark” by John Singleton Copley, reimagined by Rebecca Rose @rebeccarosenft as a spatially collaged animation.

Out of 1600 nationwide submissions, Rebecca is one of 50 artists selected by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC to reinterpret a work from the museum’s permanent collection. The animation will be displayed inside The National Gallery of Art this year and will be released as a 1/1 on a TL7160 contract with both horizontal 16:9 and vertical 9:16 versions, through AOTM Gallery on July 30th.

Rebecca chose Copley’s painting for its dynamic composition of peril, man-versus-nature tension, and historic depiction of a black main character as the central hero. Paying homage to Copley’s work, the sailor & drowning boy are kept in color to symbolize his direct help & impact on the life saving attempt, an important connection depicted in the original painting. Other figures are shown in greyscale to illustrate their less impactful attempts.

Frequently playing with concepts of identity by removing faces, for “Watson and the Shark” Rebecca chose to keep only the sailor’s identity intact. The original name and identity of the heroic life-saving sailor has been scrubbed from history while the other people’s names and identities remain preserved in historical records. Rebecca’s intentional choice flips this script: only his identity remains intact while everyone else’s are removed.

Throughout the animation, sunlit rays appear through stormy clouds above the black sailor representing his divine touch in saving the boy’s life, as well as the glowing rope connecting the sailor to the drowning boy. The dizzying camera movements directly put viewers into choppy sea waters to emphasize the perilous nature of the scene.

The original choral soundtrack is an AI generated a cappella based on lyrics from the 1749 hymn Charles Wesley Forth “In Thy Name, Oh Lord I Go”, a hymn true to the time period of the actual historic event depicted in Copley’s painting. The soundtrack was hand-edited by Rebecca to sync with visuals and hit climactic beats.

To reimagine “Watson and the Shark”, Rebecca separated the painting’s action layers as 2d pngs to build a 3d collage of the painting. Depth between layers were added to create a parallax effect with assigned camera positions, zooms & movement to create the final animation.

Rebecca Rose is a Florida-based artist creating spatially collaged digital animations rooted in dynamic storytelling. Her award-winning works blend monochromatic characters with vivid technicolor environments in immersive cautionary tales.