Bob Trotman: Model Citizens is composed of seven carved and painted wood sculptures produced between 2001 and 2005 by North Carolina artist Robert Trotman. The sculptures depict the clothed human figure, in poses that suggest discomfiture or topsy-turviness, which are meant to emphasize the duality between accident and control that is a fundamental aspect of the human experience.

Trotman’s figures often seem to have been inspired by the dress and attitudes of Americans from the 1950s, in part because it is easier for us to understand the self-imposed limitations suffered by people in the past than it is to understand our own, although the sculptures (which are composed of several pieces, like marionettes) are reminders that we continue to be controlled by external events as much by internal delusions.


Bob Trotman is sponsored by the 2006 Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery Exhibition Sponsor: Welling LaGrone and Morgan Keegan.

Image: Robert Trotman, Sinking Feeling, 2001. Wood and tempera, 53 x 34 x 35 in. Collection of Randy Shull and Hedy Fischer