How To Save My Life

How To Save My Life, oil, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 2023

I was watching a music video on YouTube. It was recently released by Nigerian Afrobeats music star, Asake. The title of the song is Yoga, and in it he sang about being in a meditative space, focusing on the right energies and people, and discarding draining ones. There was a particular scene in the video which arrested my attention and I felt I just needed to paint it and visually reinterpret in my own way. I took a screenshot of it. Here it is:

I decided to reimagine the space around the subject as a dark one, one in which the essence of the subject had a stronger chance to be felt. We all live in a world that's tumultuous, but we need to take a stance of observation wherein we perceive all the tumult as dark and we see ourselves as the salt and light in a bland, dark world mired in confusion. The stars in my composition speak to the positive guiding influences in this bleak world. We are stars that blaze in light, and light recognizes light in the midst of darkness and chaos. 

The subject, wearing a prayer cap, is looking down while assuming a relaxed pose. This does not allude to weakness in any sense. On the contrary, it speaks to our need to see strength in being still. Clarity of who we are - and what our light-bearing role in the world is - is resident in a place of calmness and rest in relation to the shitstorms around us. It is this meditative state that I highlight in this piece while dulling the seeming power of the storms around us (if you look closely enough, you'll notice the tumultuous swirly brushstrokes in the dark background). 

You can watch the Yoga video here. I'm sure you'll find it very interesting.