Watch: Finland’s newest hit artist is a half-ton brown bear named Juuso

The newest and most popular upcoming artist in Finland weighs half a ton and likes to use his entire body to express his creativity – especially his paws. Some of this 17-year-old’s paintings even feature bits of his fur.

Juuso, a 423-kg brown bear, loves to paint. His work has already been displayed at art exhibitions, and 15 of his paintings have been sold, some for more than €4,000. The bear was too busy hibernating in his home at the Kuusamo Animal Center in Northern Finland to interact with gallery visitors at his exhibition titled “Strong And Soft Touches”, but his paintings were a huge hit.

“We just leave paint for him, some plywood and paper...If we ask him to do it, he doesn’t do anything. He does all the work in his own time, when he’s alone, sitting and moving his legs on the paper,” Pasi Jantti, one of his keepers, told Reuters.

Juuso was orphaned as a cub, and has been raised by Jantti and Sulo Karjalainen since then. His artistic talent came into the limelight when the facilities at the animal centre were being painted. He got some paint in his paws, started to make marks with it, and realised he liked it. Now he uses his entire body in the process of painting.

All the money earned from his paintings goes towards supporting six other orphaned bears at the facility, as well as to fund a documentary about bears. You can see his beautiful works of art in the video above.