Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar says this coun­try “has lost a true ge­nius of the soil, icon and pi­o­neer of Caribbean art” with the pass­ing of Mr LeRoy Clarke. In a press re­lease is­sued to­day, the Op­po­si­tion Leader stat­ed that “Mr Clarke may be gone but his rev­o­lu­tion lives on. His mas­ter­ful lega­cy will con­tin­ue to in­spire gen­er­a­tions to come.” The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Op­po­si­tion Leader:

To­day Trinidad and To­ba­go has sad­ly lost a true ge­nius of the soil, icon and pi­o­neer of Caribbean art, Mr. LeRoy Clarke.

Mr Clarke was a tru­ly gift­ed painter and po­et, but those la­bels alone do not do him or his work jus­tice. Mr Clarke be­longed to that pan­theon of great Trinidad and To­ba­go in­tel­lec­tu­als, who trans­formed Caribbean cul­ture, and proved that Caribbean artists could stand shoul­der to shoul­der with those from any­where around the world. 

Draw­ing from the rich tra­di­tions of our lo­cal folk­lore, as well as his proud African her­itage, Mr Clarke’s cavass­es sought to de­pict the strug­gle of op­pressed peo­ples. His brush­strokes were the weapons by which he hoped to eman­ci­pate those liv­ing un­der re­pres­sion. 

De­scrib­ing his work Mr Clarke once said “I paint with an in­ten­tion for rev­o­lu­tion. Every stroke of my paint­ing is a sug­ges­tion of de­stroy­ing the en­e­mies of hu­man­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly African hu­man­i­ty. I paint for en­light­en­ment, to bring us clos­er to part­ing the dark­ness and open­ing up the way to our ori­gins”

Mr Clarke may be gone but his rev­o­lu­tion lives on. His mas­ter­ful lega­cy will con­tin­ue to in­spire gen­er­a­tions to come.  

I join the na­tion in mourn­ing this great icon and of­fer my deep­est con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and loved ones. 

As Mr Clarke joins his an­ces­tors, may he trav­el well.