Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

“Wel­come Home!” de­clared Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day, as he un­veiled a paint­ing done by de­ceased mas­ter artist LeRoy Clarke at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s.

The piece, ti­tled Ogun, Eyed Shaped Worlds, was paint­ed in 1997, and ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, it had been stored in the base­ment of a build­ing in Guyana, af­ter it was sent there to be dis­played at the Cari­com head­quar­ters in George­town.

“I would like to just men­tion for my friends in the me­dia, I did not buy this paint­ing; this is a gov­ern­ment paint­ing,” Row­ley joked.

The Prime Min­is­ter ex­plained that all 15 mem­ber states of Cari­com were asked to con­tribute a piece of art to grace the build­ing, and T&T sent the paint­ing on loan but it end­ed up in the base­ment.

“Of course, paint­ings do that through­out his­to­ry, and this paint­ing was in a place where it was dam­aged,” he said.

For­tu­nate­ly, a staff mem­ber saw the paint­ing, un­der­stood its sig­nif­i­cance, and con­tact­ed Row­ley.

The 28-year-old paint­ing was re­stored by Cari­com, and dur­ing the PM’s last trip to Guyana, the paint­ing re­turned with him.

Row­ley ex­plained that they se­lect­ed the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre be­cause it was the best and safest place for the paint­ing, as the build­ing was used to en­ter­tain high of­fi­cials from out­side T&T, as well as mem­bers of the pub­lic dur­ing open events.

“So we got it back, and I am ex­cit­ed to see what it looks like on a wall,” the PM stat­ed, right be­fore he raised the cur­tain and un­veiled the re­stored paint­ing.

Among the au­di­ence was Clarke’s daugh­ter Adaeze, who be­came emo­tion­al on see­ing the art piece once again. She told Guardian Me­dia that she re­mem­bered see­ing it dis­played at their fam­i­ly home in Mount Hope grow­ing up.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is his home; he be­lieved in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He came back to Trinidad and To­ba­go, so he too came back home to build his coun­try, to build a na­tion,” Adaeze said.

Clarke, who died on Ju­ly 21, 2021, at the age of 82, was al­so a po­et, a lec­tur­er/in­spi­ra­tional­ist, a philoso­pher, and an Or­isha leader.

A lo­cal web­site for art and im­ages, Na­tive Mir­ror, said Clarke was born in Bel­mont, Port-of-Spain, on No­vem­ber 7, 1938, and was con­sid­ered to be one of T&T’s finest con­tem­po­rary artists.

In 1972, he had his first one-man ex­hi­bi­tion at the New York Stu­dio Mu­se­um in Harlem. That se­ries of paint­ings was called Frag­ments of a Spir­i­tu­al.

His daugh­ter said she felt her fa­ther’s pres­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre as the piece was un­veiled, and she be­lieved he was fi­nal­ly get­ting the recog­ni­tion he de­served.

“Slow­ly but sure­ly, you know it’s al­most four years since he passed away, and things are hap­pen­ing, slow­ly be­hind the scenes,” she said.

She said she did not know that the piece was dam­aged un­til Row­ley’s speech, but she was elat­ed that steps were tak­en to bring it back to the coun­try.