Wyland Restoring Whaling Wall

Robert Wyland rubbed his paint-splattered hands together, looked up at the acre-sized mural he had painted 20 years ago and said, “The wall has held up beautifully. This may be just a painting, but it’s a very meaningful one to me.”

On Tuesday, the first day of what figures to be a week and a half restoration, the man known simply as Wyland added a whale calf to the blue whale swimming among the grays. As for the rest of the mural restoration on the AES power plant, Wyland had plans.

“I’m going to start on one end and I’m going to give all the whales a little Botox,” he said.

Wyland, who lives in Laguna Beach and has painted 100 large murals of ocean life around the world, has an artistic process he goes through, whether he’s creating an entire new mural or just adding a 20-foot calf and some "Botox."

“I don’t do any preliminary sketches. I never have. I’m going to create everything right on the wall. I imagine whales swimming by the wall and I paint them as they go by,” he said.

Wyland, considered one of the finest environmental artists in the world, said he works from memory, remembering what the whales looked like as he swam with them in the Sea of Cortez, for example. That gives him inspiration, just as watching undersea explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau inspired him as a youngster.

“I knew I wanted to be an ocean artist,” he said.

Wyland majored in sculpture at the College for Creative Studies in Detriot, then moved from Michigan to California when he was 19.

“I couldn’t take the winters. I wanted to come to California,” Wyland said. “I felt that the environmental art that I was doing was a good fit for California because new ideas are born here. That’s the way it worked out.”

Thirty years after he left, his college in Detroit gave him an honorary degree, so that worked out, too.

After painting 100 murals from Redondo Beach to Beijing, Wyland now is looking to put his sculpting major to use and do 100 sculptures in cities around the world.

Asked if he would consider creating a sculpture locally, Wyland said, “I’m going to strongly consider Redondo Beach.”

Wherever he creates his art, it’s about preserving the beauty that is nature, he said.

“I want to use my art to do good things for the planet. And I’ve been doing that my whole life; I’ve been bringing the green message for over 30 years. And I’m never going to stop,” Wyland said.

“There has never been a time like right now. It’s such a critical kind of turning point, whether we take care of our magical world or we lose a lot of it," he said.

“The biggest hope is when you talk to young people. They are more knowledgeable than our generation, more passionate, and they’re taking action.”

Wyland took action on the Wyland Whaling Wall onTuesday, using rollers, brushes and airless spray guns. When working on a canvass three acres in size, he noted, one must use technology.

“When you work for free you’ve got to work fast,” Wyland said.

Wyland used 3,000 gallons of paint and took 11 days to finish the mural in 1991. 

Over the weekend, Wyland subcontractors power-washed the mural and patched cracked areas. Although rain is expected, AES Team Leader Steve Winters said a ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for March 31.

“It has to be done then. So we got nine days,” Winters said, noting that Wyland has the ability to paint in the rain if he has to.