A Question of Murals : Art: Laguna’s Wyland says he’s an environmentalist; critics say he’s an opportunist.

Marine artist Robert Wyland likes to think of himself as Tom Sawyer, forever a boy with a paintbrush in his hand.

The description suits the tousled, Laguna Beach muralist. His impish grin and childlike energy have become almost as much of a signature as the 33 “whaling walls” he’s created around the world.

Eleven years after first painting life-size gray whales along a parking-lot wall off Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna, Wyland is now a third of the way through completing his goal of painting 100 murals.

Celebrating his 36th birthday last week the same day as the dedication of his “Planet Ocean” mural that now covers the exterior of the Long Beach Arena, Wyland was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for painting the world’s largest mural.

Like Mark Twain’s immortal fence painter, Wyland sees himself as a regular guy who is “out there painting the wall and people come along to help.”

Wyland’s critics would agree with the Sawyer comparison, but to a different end.

Many brand him a commercialist who, like the Twain character, dupes hundreds of volunteers into working with him, then sits back and reaps all the rewards. Wyland’s paintings sell for up to $175,000 in galleries around the West Coast and he has 30 countries, including Russia and China, clamoring to be chosen as the site of his next wall.

Criticized for everything from creating urban schlock to posing in 1981 in an adult magazine with a nude model, Wyland has hit roadblocks in nearly every city where he has tried to put up murals in the past decade:

* In Laguna Beach, a homeowners’ association complained that his wall would create a traffic hazard.

* In Waikiki, local merchants said humpback whales on the side of a 20-story hotel would violate the city’s anti-billboard laws.

* Long Beach artists criticized city officials for not holding a contest to choose a muralist for the Long Beach Arena. Others, including one designer of the building, said Wyland’s work would detract from the arena’s architecture.

Refusing to be discouraged, Wyland completed all three, as well as walls in Dana Point, Honolulu, Japan, and Vancouver and White Rock, Canada. He finished all 116,000 square feet of the Long Beach wall in little over a month and chose that city as the site for his 12th art gallery, which opened shortly after the mural was finished. He also recently published his first book--a coffee-table pictorial of his various murals and other artworks.

“They’ve made my mission more important,” Wyland said of his critics. “If I’ve influenced one child to grow up and become a Jacques Cousteau, it will be worth it.”

Wyland, who has long used only his surname professionally, offers the murals as gifts to the cities he paints them in. He makes his living selling prints, paintings and sculptures. Corporate and private donations of cash and materials offset the cost of thousands of gallons of paint and scaffolding equipment required for each mural project.

In the years since he started painting the murals, Wyland says his vision of using art as an educational tool to save the whales has expanded to one that now includes saving the oceans.

“If you look into the whales’ eyes (on the mural), it’s like they’re staring back at you,” said GinaRose Kimball, an environmental biology student at Rio Hondo College in Whittier. “It looks like they’re saying ‘Help me. Help me.’ ”

But even some environmentalists have taken issue with Wyland’s projects.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society severed its relationship with Wyland in 1985 after the artist allegedly failed to pay the group a promised percentage of his profits. Wyland, who worked as the group’s international art director for two years, said he paid thousands of dollars to disassociate himself from a group he now calls dishonest.

The Cousteau Society Inc. has asked Wyland to stop showing people a supportive letter sent to him a few years ago by Jacques Michel Cousteau. A spokeswoman for the Society said the group does not take issue with Wyland’s art or his approach. But she said Wyland should not be using the letter as a promotional tool because the society is a nonprofit organization.

“To a lot of people, Wyland is the No. 1 illustrator in the world just because he paints big,” said Robin Lee Makowski, an illustrator of 16 years for the American Cetacean Society. “But he needs some background in biology” as well as in whale behavior.

Makowski said that many of Wyland’s whales are not shaped correctly. Further, she said, baby whales do not swim under their mothers, as Wyland has painted them, but rather near their eyes.

“I would say that’s a little nit-picky,” said Maris Sidenstecker II, a marine biologist and co-founder of Save the Whales, which is based in Venice, Calif.

Sidenstecker assisted Wyland in Long Beach by spending more than two weeks at the base of the arena displaying whale bones and lecturing to 2,000 school children about the ocean.

Mike Schaadt, exhibit director of the Cabrillo Marine Museum, also consulted with Wyland to ensure pictorial accuracy on the great white shark and some of the organisms that live on the bottom of the ocean. But he acknowledged that Wyland felt comfortable enough to do the whales on his own.

“If you’re asking me if they’re completely, scientifically accurate I would have to say no,” said Schaadt, who also is a marine biologist. “But it’s my opinion that his degree of accuracy (helps give) people the idea of where they live. He wants to do the best for the environment. Kids are not going to be exposed to some great scientific heresy” when looking at a Wyland mural.

Makowski, however, doesn’t buy the argument that Wyland’s work serves an educational purpose, claiming that the artist puts commercialism ahead of his environmentalism.

“I wouldn’t have a problem with him if he said, ‘I’m painting this as a billboard to promote myself,” Makowski said. “It’s the hypocrisy that bugs me. He doesn’t put his money where is mouth is.”

Wyland argues that he does.

“The people who are talking about me don’t know what I do,” he said, citing contributions he has made to a variety of environmental organizations.

At the dedication of the Long Beach wall, for example, Wyland gave checks for $1,000 each to Save the Whales, Friends of Long Beach Animal Shelter and the Long Beach Children’s Museum.

Next year for Earth Day, Wyland wants to return to Long Beach to paint the planet on top of the arena’s roof. And in addition to his remaining 67 walls, Wyland aims to begin building bronze whale sculptures in cities throughout America, similar to fountains in European capitals.

“One person can make a difference,” Wyland said. “Everybody can find a way.”