Picasso may have owned paintings by Congo the Abstract Expressionist chimpanzee, but now collectors of all stripes can purchase paintings by animals. The Tulsa Zoo in Oklahoma is using art created by its animal charges as a fundraising tool, selling canvases of foot-, snout-, and claw-prints for prices ranging from a measly $35 to $5,000 for works by larger creatures — polar bears included.

A collection of photos on the zoo’s Web site shows a gallery’s worth of pieces by different animals. Elephants held paintbrushes in their trunks to make graceful Ab-Ex pieces that might call to mind calligraphy ($200) while Maggie the porcupine gave her own spin on Futurism with a swirling composition of pink and green ($100). The most expensive work was created by the polar bear, which pressed its painted nose and paws into a two-by-three-foot canvas ($5,000).

The Tulsa World reports that some of the paintings have already been sold to budding animal-art collectors all around the world. How are these works really made, though? Are the animals forced to paint, or do they have to get an MFA first?  The smaller animals are simply daubed with paint and walked across canvases with food as incentive (such was the case with Maggie the porcupine), but the larger beasts like tigers and bears “create the art while being examined in the veterinary hospital under sedation,” according to Tulsa World. Clearly, they are under the influence of that old artistic spur — drugs.

Yet other animals paint for “health reasons,” or as an enrichment activity, a way to keep chimps, elephants, and raccoons “mentally stimulated.” Animals outside of captivity like to paint, too. ARTINFO’s June 2011 article “The Great Animal Artists of Our Time” found Cholla, the easel painting horse, Tillie, the Chagall-influenced terrier, and, of course, Cooper the photographer cat. We predicted that soon, “penguins will be opening auction houses.” Well, we were close — a one-foot-square penguin painting from the Tulsa Zoo is selling for $150.  

Click here or on view slideshow to see a selection of paintings from animals at the Tulsa Zoo