Art Imitates Life - And Vice Versa -- Marine-Life Painter Plans To Exchange Mexican Mural For Keiko The Movie Whale

A lovable little boy meets an equally lovable but aquarium-bound orca. The boy resolves to free the whale and does so, to the chords of a Michael Jackson tune.

That's Hollywood. In real life, just as the boy actor returns to his trailer, the whale returns to his tank.

Keiko, the whale who portrayed Willy in the movie "Free Willy," still lives in a Mexico City aquatic amusement park. But life does imitate art in odd ways.

Although Keiko has not met a little boy, he has met 38-year-old Wyland, a marine-life artist who still possesses enough childlike wonder to want the whale to go free.

Wyland, who does not use his first name, Robert, will take charge of Keiko in a year in exchange for painting a life-size mural at Mexico City's Reino Aventura seaquarium depicting Keiko among other whales in his native waters off Iceland.

It will not be Wyland's first such mural. The internationally known artist, has made a career of painting whales, a career which he says he turned to after a moment of true inspiration.

"The first time that I saw the ocean, I saw whales," he said. "It was at Laguna Beach in California, and the whales were out there in the distance."

Wyland painted the first of 56 whale murals, which he calls "whaling walls," at Laguna Beach in 1981.

He will paint his 57th on the north and south exterior walls of Seattle's Quality Inn City Center, at Eighth Avenue and Bell Street, starting this week. He will paint the Mexico City mural in September.

The mural that Wyland is planning to paint at the Quality Inn will be more than 80 feet high. One that he just finished in Vancouver was 160 feet long.

In 1992, Wyland painted the world's largest mural - more than a mile long - on the circular exterior wall of a convention center in Long Beach, Calif.

"The walls developed out the difficulties of painting whales and dolphins on canvas," he explained. "I felt frustrated when I wanted to capture the size and unique spirit of these animals."

Wyland uses rollers and spray guns to paint his murals. He said he can paint them within a few days and does no preliminary sketching. "I just imagine the water on the wall," he said. "and the whales swim in."

Behind the grand depictions, Wyland says there is an environmental message.

"People don't expect to see whales on the walls of a city," Wyland said. "If they see this, it just might inspire them to do something to help the whales."

The artist himself seems to have had that effect on Keiko's owners.

Wyland was not the first person to try to free the orca. Michael Jackson, the man who wailed for Willy in the movie, asked to take charge of Keiko and was turned down.

"I went to see him with a bunch of people," Wyland recalled. "Keiko just ignored everybody else in our party and swam over to me."

The park owners were impressed, he said.

Wyland said he is consulting marine experts about what to do with the whale. They will first find it a larger tank, he said, and try to train it to catch fish again. In the long term, Wyland would like to free Keiko.

Wyland said he thought the park's owners genuinely wanted to do something for the whale but were looking for the right way to do so.

"This way they get a landmark mural," said Wyland, "and people in Mexico really appreciate art."

A lack of appreciation for Wyland's art sometimes leads to its destruction. He painted another orca mural 10 years ago at Seattle's Edgewater Inn, but it was painted over when the hotel was renovated by new ownership in 1988.

Born and reared in Detroit, Wyland was 14 years old when he first saw the ocean.

He now lives in Hawaii and owns a string of highly successful galleries that sell originals and reproductions of his smaller works.

The revenues from those sales and corporate sponsorship allow him to paint the murals for free. Quality Inn general manager Kit Butler said the hotel was enthusiastic about the mural and had planned a major renovation around it.

A branch of San Juan Island's Whale Museum will open in the hotel, with a possible Wyland gallery to follow. Butler also hopes the mural can bring some life to the soulless strip on the edge of Belltown.

Wyland said he might enjoy a break from whales to paint dinosaurs. "I like the big guys," he said.

But that might diminish the message of his medium. "The dinosaurs are extinct," he said. "The whales we can still save."