Keith McIntyre
Exhibiting in the room above the cafe
the withdrawing room
‘Lines of desire’ represent the shortest and most navigable route between an origin and destination. The term is frequently used to define an informal path taken from one location to another. Lines are equally valuable to the genealogist as they map out the lineage of a family tree.
The drawings in the withdrawing room have emerged in response Bell Scott’s Wallington murals. Each revisits a familiar landscape location in Northumberland: Steel Rigg on Hadrians Wall, Lindisfarne and the Pinacles on Farne Islands. While the narratives in Bells Scott's paintings depict a journey through history (and that of both the Trevelyan family and Wallington community) the physical geography of the landscape and rocks have remained the same.
The Scottish 18th century Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Macintyre often wrote eulogies about landscape. In his epic nature work ‘Moladh Bein Dobrain’ – In praise of Ben Dobrian, the celebration of a mountain is immortalised in poetic line.
The black ink lines in these drawings have another function in that they interrogate and celebrate the ancient geology that has formed these distinctly Northumbrian places. The marks, the paths and the lines that we weave across the landscape seem temporary, perhaps even unfinished and like drawing are a process of speculative enquiry.
Steel Rigg
Lindisfarne
The Pinacles, Farne Islands