Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has joined those mourn­ing the death of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pro­lif­ic artist LeRoy Clarke, who passed away on Tues­day at his Cas­cade home-The Lega­cy House, af­ter ail­ing for a pe­ri­od of time.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Row­ley de­scribed Clarke as an in­spi­ra­tion and ed­i­fy­ing light to the na­tion of T&T and a man with words of wis­dom.

Row­ley wrote of the ‘Mas­ter Artist,’ “He cham­pi­oned re­spect and per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and pro­vid­ed in­spi­ra­tion with con­fi­dence to a na­tion which fre­quent­ly choos­es shades of dark­ness in­stead of en­light­en­ment.”

The Prime Min­is­ter added, “He spoke his truth force­ful­ly and un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly with em­pa­thy and vi­sion.”

Row­ley de­scribed Clarke’s death as a loss that has made the cre­ative land­scape in Trinidad and To­ba­go ‘poor­er’ now with his ab­sence.

But at the same time, he said the cre­ative es­tate Clarke has left be­hind through his gifts, would live on for­ev­er. 

“We are poor­er for no longer hav­ing him in our pres­ence but thank­ful­ly, he left us a lega­cy of writ­ings and can­vas that will for­ev­er en­rich us for gen­er­a­tions to come.”