bio and artist statement

BIOGRAPHY

Bob Trotman was born in Winston-Salem, NC in 1947. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Washington and Lee University and for 35 years has maintained a studio in the foothills of Western North Carolina. Self-taught in art, he has received two NEA grants and four grants from the North Carolina Arts Council. His work is in the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The North Carolina Museum of Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, The Mint Museum of Art, The Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design, and The Museum of Art and Design in New York among others.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Working mostly in wood, I see my efforts in relation to the vernacular traditions of the carved religious figures, ships' figureheads, and the so-called "show figures" found in the nineteenth century outside shops and in circuses.  But as a contemporary artist I am fascinated by a noire narrative of life at the office.  My wooden people, often surprisingly posed, evoke both humor and anxiety and, taken together, offer an absurdist vision of an imaginary corporate purgatory.