Dear Fellow Art Lovers,
The first crisp days of autumn arrive with their quiet transformations: leaves scuttling across pavements, woodsmoke drifting on the wind, a cool breath brushing the cheek even as the sun still warms the brow. After a long illness, I return to writing with a sharpened sense of how fleeting these seasons feel, how delicately beauty and change are interwoven. It seems fitting,
then, to turn to Penelope Gottlieb’s “Solanum Dulcamara” (Bittersweet Nightshade)—a work that dwells precisely in that liminal space, where life flourishes even as decay whispers at its edges.
Gottlieb’s painting takes a page—literally—from John James Audubon’s Birds of America, with its cream backgrounds and meticulous taxonomy, and overlays it with the coils of invasive nightshade. The result is both lush and unsettling: a meditation on beauty, fragility, and the uneasy imprint of human intervention in the natural world.
Gottlieb, based in Santa Barbara, has spent decades exploring the interface between ecological history and artistic imagination. Her earlier works resurrected extinct plants through careful research and reconstruction; in her current “Invasive Species” series, she turns her attention to vigorous non-native flora that threaten ecosystems. In “Solanum Dulcamara”, she overlays extremely high quality digital prints of 19th-century John James Audubon plates with tightly woven bands of invasive plants, creating a dialogue across centuries: Audubon’s meticulous observation meets Gottlieb’s critical reflection on ecological imbalance. This series is currently on view at G. Peters Gallery in Texas.
Audio Description of “Solanum Dulcamara”
Imagine a soft cream background framed on all sides by half an inch of delicate white. At the very top of the cream area, in charcoal grey, the numbers “No. 21” appear on the left and “Plate CI” on the right, subtle reminders of Audubon’s meticulous taxonomy and the historical weight of this plate. These plates originally appeared in Audubon’s monumental book, The Birds of America (1827–1838), each measuring an extraordinary 39 by 26 inches—life-sized for many of the birds depicted—necessitating extraordinary precision in both observation and rendering. In the upper left of the work a leaden-grey moth hovers midair. Its wings are spread, and antennae and two slender legs almost tremble with anticipation, poised to settle on a thin green stem below. Three slender, elongated leaves fan from this stem, veins pale and delicate like the lines of an old manuscript, while a single blade of grass rises behind, guiding your gaze downward, toward the unfolding drama of the composition.
To the right, a red-orange lily, luminous and vibrant, opens like a small sun tipped with gold and yellow. Its petals bow gently downward, subtly tilting the viewer’s eye toward the heart of the painting. Beneath, two tiny green seed pods, with miniature crosses, rest quietly, and nearby leaves carry faint brown speckles—soft whispers of impermanence—the bloom’s cycle from flower to seed head.
At the centre, a golden tiger lily bursts open, its petals tipped with warm orange and flecked with fine pink pollen, a delicate dusting that seems almost touchable. Your gaze follows these flecks downward and to the right, arriving at a distant red dahlia. Its petals, layered and intricate, hold subtle blushes of pink among deeper crimson shadows. Nearby, six tiny blue flowers cluster together, their dark centres circled with yellow-tipped stamens, a gentle counterpoint of cool against the fiery warmth of the lilies and dahlias.
Anchoring this rich tableau, a black raven perches on a dark grey branch. Its feathers shine with nuanced grey highlights, catching light, emphasising the glossy health of the bird. Its wings are slightly lifted, but the Raven is trapped, ensnared by twisting vines of bittersweet nightshade. The vine, alive with small lavender-blue flowers and bright orange berries, coils around the raven’s chest, wings, and legs. The combination of flowers and berries highlights the shift from summer into early fall. From the raven’s curved black beak glints a perfectly round white diamond, and its brown eye catches a pinpoint of reflected light, as if aware of its captivity.
Around its claws, two large orange dahlias bloom, centres glowing softly, while beneath them, a fading dahlia hints at impermanence, the passage of time and fragility of life made palpable. Toward the bottom right, a dense pinkish-red dahlia radiates, layered and intricate. Behind it, jagged chicken wire climbs the painting’s edge—a subtle nod to Audubon’s own use of wire to mount specimens, reminding us of the human hand guiding, shaping, and containing life.
At the very bottom, in elegant siena ink, the name of the plant, “Solanum Dulcamara”, is written. Directly beneath, in charcoal, appear the words “Raven,” followed by its Latin name, ”Corvus corax”, and the word “male” in italics—anchors of taxonomy and identity, writing history and human understanding into the natural scene.
This composition, lush and vibrant yet deeply fragile, recalls the vanitas paintings of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch artists, where beauty, wealth, and life itself are tempered with reminders of mortality, decay, and impermanence. The flowers bloom and fade, the moth hovers, and the raven struggles—all under the silent gaze of time and human observation. Every element guides the listener or viewer through a meditation on growth, decay, and the delicate, intertwined fates of life, art, and the environment.
Through these layers, Gottlieb transforms Audubon’s birds into stand-ins for vulnerability and self-reflection. The raven, made captive, embodies the tension between flourishing and restraint, while the bittersweet nightshade entwines beauty with threat. Life and death, observation and intervention, beauty and peril—all coexist in a subtle, resonant contained image.
John James Audubon and the Dialogue of Observation
Audubon (1785–1851) occupies a complex place in this conversation. A man of extraordinary observational skill, he captured birds in lifelike motion, transforming natural history illustration. Birds were studied in the wild, then mounted on wire and cotton frameworks, wings and necks bent into lifelike postures, capturing mid-flight gestures and delicate balances. Gottlieb echoes this tension in her work: the raven, ensnared by twisting vines of bittersweet nightshade, mirrors both the control and care inherent in Audubon’s method. The fragment of jagged chicken wire climbing the edge of her painting recalls the invisible scaffolding that once allowed Audubon’s birds to appear alive on paper, while amplifying the meditation on ecological fragility and human intervention. Audubon’s famous aphorism, “A day without shooting a hundred birds is a day wasted,” reflects the period’s prevailing attitudes toward nature. Yet he was also keenly aware of declining populations and habitat loss, recording scarcity and sounding early, if tentative, alarms about the effects of human intervention in nature.
Invasive species, like the bittersweet nightshade depicted here, disrupt ecological balance by outcompeting native flora and fauna. Introduced often through human activity—trade, travel, or ornamental planting—these organisms flourish where they are not meant to be, creating profound consequences for water tables, forest habitats, and the risk of wildfire. Gottlieb’s work does not merely catalog these plants; it gives them narrative weight, entwining them with the living subjects Audubon once celebrated. The vines wrap around the raven’s claws and wings, hinting at both beauty and menace, vibrancy and constraint—life flourishing even as it is contained. The raven, typically an opportunistic predator, is here made prey, not by Audubon’s gun but by the indirect consequences of human activity, which introduce and empower these invasive species.
Reflection and Links
Gottlieb emphasises that the birds themselves become stand-ins for vulnerability—the self within the ecosystem—while the invasive plants symbolise forces both natural and anthropogenic, thriving yet threatening, elegant yet destructive. In appropriating Audubon, she both honours and interrogates his work, exploring the paradox of capturing life by taking it, documenting it through intervention, and turning observation into a cautionary reflection on ecological fragility.
For further engagement:
Penelope Gottlieb – Official Website (https://www.penelopegottlieb.com)
Biography of John James Audubon (https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/marchapril/feature/drawn-nature)
Invasive Species – National Geographic (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/invasive-species-western-us)
Bittersweet Nightshade Info (https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/solanum_dulcamara.shtml)
Upcoming Audio-Described Tour in London:
Barbican Centre – “Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum”. Monday, 20 October 2025, 11:00 AM. Audio-described tours led by Harry Baxter offer detailed verbal descriptions.
May this season of mellow mists and slanting sunlight inspire reflection on the beauty and fragility of the world around us.
Warmly,
Lisa and Aurora
P.S. As I write this, I reflect on my own companions. Who always help me to connect with and properly enjoy nature (even the extremely muddy bits.) Last October, my guide dog Star—whom many of you met and shook paws with at previous AD tours—passed away. Now, Aurora, our eleven-month-old golden retriever, brings curiosity and warmth to the study and garden. While she will not ever accompany me on tours, as she serves as our “emergency back-up puppy,” while I await a new guide dog match. But Aurora does just as good a job reminding me daily of the quiet guidance, resilience, and joy that animals bring to our creative lives.
