Bob Timberlake is a Renaissance man, versatile like a modern day Leonardo de Vinci, performing brilliantly in several fields.
He has been honored twice at the White House as Official Artist and official spokesman for Keep America Beautiful. Other awards range from the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism to the state’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. That’s pretty heady stuff for an artist who didn’t begin his professional career until he was 33 years old.
Born in Salisbury in 1937, Timberlake grew up in Lexington where he still lives. When he graduated from the University of North Carolina with a BS degree in industrial relations, he was married with three children and a good job in his family’s propane gas business. His life changed one evening when he was browsing through a Life magazine. An article with photographs of Andrew Wyeth’s work “moved him to tears,” convincing him that he too was destined to be an artist. He began his career soon after.
His first art exhibition was a sold-out show in May 1970 in Winston-Salem. Three years later, he held the first of seven one-person exhibits at Hammer Galleries in New York City, which also sold out before opening. He exhibited with Norman Rockwell at the Artists of America show in Philadelphia and New Jersey in 1974 and was one of 14 artists chosen for a White House Christmas exhibition, sponsored by the White House Historical Association.
His career as an artist was well established when he began designing and licensing home furnishings and clothing in 1990. He partnered with Lexington Furniture to create The World of Bob Timberlake, the best-selling furniture collection in the industry’s history. His furnishings were chosen for the Chetola Resort’s Manor House Estate House in Blowing Tock, renamed the Bob Timberlake Inn at Chetola.
Bob Timberlake with a special piece of furniture he designed in 1989 and recently donated to the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh. A unique feature of the dresser is a large knot on one of the middle drawers, something unheard of in the industry when the line was released in 1990. Bob insisted the “character” of the wood be shown in his furniture collection which intentionally reproduces the textures and heavy distressing associated with greatly-cherished antiques.
Two Timberlake galleries today offer original paintings which are sold along with carefully certified prints at 1714 East Center Extension in Lexington and in Blowing Rock at 945 Main Street.
His autobiography, Partial to Home – A Memoir of the Heart, was written with fellow Tar Heel Jerry Bledsoe in 1999. In it he reveals how, as a self-taught artist, he was influenced and mentored by Andrew Wyeth.