Bob Timberlake is far and away North Carolina's most recognized and successful living artist. A painter of rural landscapes, he is a master of the American Realist genre. Timberlake's work is a touchstone to a fading way of rural life in the fast-growing South, and a testament to the value of time spent in wood lots and on front porches - of rolling hills and log barns winking from the roadside.

But Bob Timberlake is not a painter only. He has designed a hugely successful line of home furnishings - hundreds of pieces, from tables and sofas to lamps and rugs, all inspired by his paintings and his collection of museum quality 18th century antiques and decorative art.

In his furniture line are reproductions and adaptations of cabinets and tables made by Fred Craver, the Piedmont master cabinetmaker who tutored Bob Timberlake from childhood on the "language of wood."

Yet, in spite of all his successes and accomplishments, Bob Timberlake still lives where he was born, among the rolling hills of North Carolina's rural Piedmont, never forgetting the place where he grew up … for it is still the place he calls home.*

At the age of 33, Bob was encouraged by Andrew Wyeth to devote himself to painting full-time. His first three solo exhibitions at New York's Hammer Galleries were sold out days before their openings. He has held numerous solo museum exhibitions, including the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Fry Museum in Seattle, and the Isetan Gallery in Tokyo. Bob designed the first Christmas Stamp for the US Postal Service, both the North Carolina and South Carolina statehood stamps, and the commemorative postcard marking the bicentennial of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

*Excerpts from Bob Timberlake: Roots and Reflections, Portfolio Press and Bob Timberlake, Inc. ©1997. Used by permission.