I’m Laura Shape, The Invasive Species Artist. I’m an American fine artist who transforms invasive-species leather into luminous contemporary paintings that combine beauty, material innovation, and environmental impact. I don’t make art about environmental threats. I make art from them.
I work with leather made from invasive lionfish from Caribbean reefs, Burmese python from the Florida Everglades, and carp from the Mississippi River system. All three were introduced by people into places where they didn’t naturally belong, either as pets or as a practical-seeming solution to another problem. But once established, they spread out of control. Now they’re wreaking havoc on those ecosystems and, unfortunately, need to be removed.
Because images can now be generated and reproduced almost instantly, I’m drawn to making physical objects that could never be duplicated exactly. Every hide I use is unique, shaped by nature and by the life of the individual animal. Its scales, scars, texture, and irregularities belong to only one body. I cut and mount this leather onto wood panels or artboard to create the painting surface. So even before I apply any paint, each piece begins with a surface that could never be recreated in exactly the same way twice.
Each piece begins with a surface that could never be recreated
I use acrylic paint, airbrush, and the natural texture of the leather to create paintings inspired by water, sky, light, and feeling. I don’t try to make the leather behave like canvas. I want its scales, seams, patterns, and irregular surfaces to remain visible and become part of the image. Sometimes a fish’s scale pocket becomes a bird. Sometimes the textures suggest ripples or the movement of water. The material often gives me ideas I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and I develop each painting partly in response to the animals and where they came from.
My paintings explore abstracted landscapes and fields of color rather than describing a place exactly. My goal is to convey the feeling a place gives me. I use sky, water, atmosphere, and light because they fill me with calm, expansiveness, wonder, and connection to something larger than myself, and I hope to give the viewer some of that same experience.
I make the work beautiful, hopeful, and inviting rather than shocking or confrontational because I’m not interested in depicting environmental damage or asking the viewer to be moved by the problem. The artwork itself is part of the solution. I want people to be drawn in by the color, texture, and feeling first. Then, if they become curious about the material, they can discover its story and the environmental problem behind it.
What’s most important to me is that I’m helping fix one of humankind’s past mistakes. By creating fine art from invasive-species leather, I help create economic demand for removing these animals and contribute to protecting the ecosystems they’re damaging. I also honor their lives by transforming their remains into something beautiful. I never want to erase what they were in the process. The animals are always physically present in the finished work.
For me, the work is about transformation in a very literal way: a life becomes a material, the material becomes a painting, dull leather becomes vibrant light and color, and something that was part of an ecological problem becomes a source of beauty, curiosity, and joy.