MEDICINE and MAGIC

The floral fingers of botanical healing intertwine with ancient mythology and lore in the paintings of Luke Hillestad.

- MICHAEL PEARCE

Luke Hillestad’s recent show of oils at Copro Gallery in Los Angeles was full of medicine and magic, an offering of herbal healing through images of pagan and Christian mythology and lore. His figurative paintings reach into the past, weaving the spells of the ancients into his images, telling tales of trust and tradition, each image tying people and plants together.

The floral fingers of the long tradition of botanical art reach back to the paleolithic caves of prehistory, where fearless hunter-gatherers painted their lamp-lit shamanic visions onto the dark faces of rock walls beside the snoring bulk of hibernating bears, inextricably linking herbal medicine and spirituality into the earliest moments of art history. Delicate mushrooms and flowers hide among their primordial paintings of beautifully rendered charcoal herds of black buffalo and red ochre prides of lions. Hillestad binds his work into this lineage of health and therapy, using texts like “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and “The Iliad” and Pliny the Elder as sources.

His small emblem painting, Gilgamesh’s Flower, was inspired by the hero of the ancient epic written about 2000 B.C. In it, a Noah-like character told King Gilgamesh where he could find the flower of youth hidden at the bottom of the sea, but warned him that it had thorns like a rose. Fearlessly, Gilgamesh tied stones to his feet and dove into the depths, and despite the thorns, he grasped the flower and brought it to the surface. Worried about the consequences of eating it, he decided to return to Uruk, the capital of his kingdom, planning to test some of the flower on an old man to see its effects, then eat it himself to return to his youth. However, on his journey home Gilgamesh decided to take a dip in a spring to prepare for his arrival. While he washed in the cool waters, a snake stole the flower, and shed its skin. Gilgamesh wept.