Na­tion­al icon LeRoy Clarke has died.  He was 82 years old.

The first of nine chil­dren, LeRoy Clarke was born on 7 No­vem­ber 1938 in Gon­za­les, Port of Spain, al­so known as “be­hind de bridge”.  In his life­time he be­came many things in­clud­ing school­teacher, singer, mem­ber of the the­atre com­mu­ni­ty, artist, au­thor, po­et, philoso­pher and Or­isha Leader.

His of­fi­cial bi­og­ra­phy at https://www.leroyclarke.com/bi­og­ra­phy de­scribes him as a man of many tal­ents, not­ing that “this for­mer school­teacher was al­so a lead singer in a pop­u­lar singing, group THE BEAM­ERS (1958-65) and, was se­ri­ous­ly in­volved in the the­atre com­mu­ni­ty.  He was an ear­ly mem­ber of The Trinidad The­atre Work­shop, where he earned a fine rep­u­ta­tion as its Stage Man­ag­er and Set De­sign­er.”

Con­sid­ered to be one of this coun­try’s finest con­tem­po­rary artists, this self-taught mas­ter of­ten de­scribed his work as be­ing ‘obeah’, a de­lib­er­ate evo­ca­tion of un­taint­ed African en­er­gy and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, both erased from mod­ern con­scious­ness. Af­ter hold­ing his first ex­hi­bi­tion at the age of 27 years, Clarke’s prowess as a vi­su­al artist grew from a com­punc­tion to “see and, to go deep­er than sur­faces al­lowed”, us­ing his life ex­pe­ri­ences to shape the world­view to which he, as artist cham­pi­oned all his life.

In 1998, he was the first to be con­ferred the ti­tle Mas­ter Artist by The Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

LeRoy Clarke would go on to achieve many ho­n­ours in his life­time, in­clud­ing be­ing ac­claimed a Na­tion­al Icon by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2003; and hav­ing be­stowed up­on him an Hon­orary Fel­low of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) in 2005, as well as an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters in 2008 from that same in­sti­tu­tion.

How­ev­er, the ho­n­our of which LeRoy Clarke was most proud was be­ing award­ed a “Staff of El­der­ship” and Chief­tain­cy Ti­tle in the Or­isha com­mu­ni­ty by the Ile’ Eko Shango/Os­hun Mil’osa (I.E.S.O.M.) dur­ing the sixth an­nu­al Shango/Os­hun Rain Fes­ti­val in 2005—the ti­tle reads: Chief Ifa’ Oje’ Won Yo­mi Abio­dun of Trinidad and To­ba­go.