Artist turns stone into JAWS shark and people are taking amazing photos

JAWS remains one of the great works of art in popular cinema. It was a testament to hard work, resilience and sheer bloody-mindedness. An abject refusal to throw in the towel when every fibre in your being is telling you it’s just not worth it.

But then art can do strange things to you. It can drive you to dangerous, damaging places like Vincent Van Gogh, or inspire you to celebrate commercialism and repetition by printing pictures of soup cans all day long as Andy Warhol did. Art gets under your skin, it pushes you, forces you to keep going and innovate.

JAWS has inspired artists of all types - be they model makers like Alexandre Ramon who constructed a beautiful scale model of the Orca, or the legions of devoted and business-savvy makers who create all kinds of ‘new’ posters such as Laurent Durieux’s wonderful encapsulation of the entire movie in a single image.

There are others who happen upon their inspiration in the most peculiar - yet at the same time blindingly obvious - places.

Jimmy Swift is the creator of a quite incredible work on Palolem Beach in Goa. It’s not his first piece though, there was his famous elephant emerging from the sand with a nice little top knot of green hair (just a bit of natural vegetation in actuality) sitting like a crown atop its majestic head, but it was his next bit of wave-side art that really caught everyone’s eye…

When Jimmy looks at the rocks, he just sees things. And one of those rocks looked mighty familiar, so much so that he simply couldn’t help but start painting it.

“When I first saw this rock, it looked like a perfect place for a Great White, hopefully it doesn't scare the */%! out of people!”

And before he knew where what was happening, he was staring at that famous gaping mouth and those rows of dagger-like teeth that all us fans of the greatest movie ever made love so much!

The thing is, as Mr Spielberg would no doubt concur, the ocean and art are seldom friends. Yes, of course, there have been many incredible works of art done of the sea but most of these were created on dry land, in a studio under controlled conditions. Our intrepid 26 year old director famously battled all sorts of climactic and technical headaches and complications and when Jimmy Swift set to work with his paints he found that Mother Nature does what she wants. Annoyingly, as he worked, the tides kept coming in! For the average tourist on a beach hill I day, the lazy lapping of waves upon golden sands is part of the allure, but when you’re trying to paint a representation of a 25ft Great White on a big rock, they can get to be a bit of a pain. Another problem was that of course the water kept diluting the paint. Not good.

But just like Brody, Jimmy kept doggedly pushing forward. He would not be beaten, not by a fish! And in the end, all that work paid off. His work is all over the internet and Instagram tags for Palolem Beach went crazy as more and more people just had to have their picture taken with big Bruce.

Jimmy wrote on the social media site: “I was literally beat up by the waves and rising tide and forced to stop before it was finished. “I could have done better, but between the blowing sand and wind, splashing waves, burning hot sun and the fact I've never painted a shark before or painted on a 3-dimension surface like a rock...I think it turned out okay.” Swift has gone back to his rock shark on several occasions, to try and keep the paint as fresh as possible but in the end the ocean will always win. The most recognisable bit about Bruce has always been his big ‘smile’ and this part of Jimmy’s painting is still very much in evidence. Those pearly whites keep the tourists coming back again and again.

Another great aspect of Jimmy’s work is that it isn’t in a gallery, it's out in the world for everyone to appreciate and enjoy. And if the world of social media is anything to go by (and let’s face it, it’s where most of us get a lot of our information from these days) those who see it really love it.

Jimmy’s view of his art is the different types of impacts it has on people. No two people see something the same way or take the same feeling away with them.

JAWS, the movie is just the same. For some is at its heart a drama about local politics and corruption and how this can make people into rash decisions that endanger others, a comedy about a man who somehow ends up buying a house an island when he’s terrified of water, a commentary on the fragility of the human existence, or simply a movie about a really big shark. Movies are public property - juts like Jimmy Swift’s beach art.

Many a director has said that the moment a movie is released, it becomes public property. They don't own it anymore, it’s handed over to the people.

As Jimmy Swift says: “Some people might find it cute and something you take a selfie in front of and for others it might open up a deeper feeling within.”

Words by Tim Armitage

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