LEXINGTON, N.C. — Ahead of the Lexington Barbecue Festival this weekend, The Good Morning Show is looking at what makes the event so great! For example: It has a limited-edition wine! NASCAR legend Richard Childress teams up his vineyard with internationally renowned artist Bob Timberlake who creates the label artwork.
Timberlake is from Lexington. His vivid paintings of life in our area have been featured worldwide and are hot collectibles. He also created the bestselling furniture line in American history – passing well over $1 billion in sales. And Timberlake has been a driving force behind the Keep America Beautiful campaign. Somehow in doing all of that, he found time to paint with us and talk about his work.
“I’m at play doing what I’m doing," Timberlake said from his Lexington gallery. He added that his latest work, “Cornstalk Jack” did not start as a stroke of genius, but more having fun.
“Creating is wonderful. It’s like reading a book. If you’re reading a book at night and you just don’t want it to stop. It’s like me painting," he said. "I’m reading the best book I’ve ever read, and I don’t want to put it down.”
He calls himself a Halloween nut who wanted to see what he could do with a jack-o-lantern. So he built the sculpture that inspired the painting in the backyard.
"People ask me all of the time, how do you come up with an idea? That’s not the question. It’s trying to decide between the 300 or 400 ideas I want to do. I find them walking the grass, or outside. Talking to people. Or going to furniture market," Timberlake said. "C.S. Lewis once wrote one time he had six impossible ideas before breakfast every morning. That’s me.”
One of those ideas was to create a trunk at the age of 14. Timberlake won the first-ever Ford Motor Company industry arts award for the work helping to encourage him to make a career in art.
“The man upstairs was leading me along. He truly was," Timberlake said.
Since then he’s pretty much thought non-stop about what else he could make. His advice for when you have lots of ideas: "I just do whatever I’m most interested in."
Editor's note:
Timberlake also does this thing where he writes notes to himself while he’s painting. On his notes, while we were out there were some of his rules for a happy, successful life. If you want to see those, they are on Ben Briscoe's Facebook page.