Celebrity artist Wyland, whose giant murals of undersea creatures have soared over cities all over the world, is celebrating his 60th birthday this month with a bit of reflection.

After more than three decades of painting his visions of nature, the artist described himself as “very fortunate.”

“I consider myself to be an artist who was in the right place at the right time, growing up in the early ’70s when the first Earth Day was in 1970, and Greenpeace and Jacques Cousteau — my hero — were active,” he said. “I kind of took that all in, growing up far away from the ocean but surrounded by water in Detroit. I feel very lucky to have grown up at that moment.”

Wyland’s approach to marine art — showing wildlife above and below the surface — has inspired numerous other artists to use the same perspective. Wyland said he got the idea as a kid reading National Geographic.

“They would show the above and below of habitats,” he said. “The only thing was that they had numbers by the fish.”

Wyland celebrated his 60th birthday July 9 in Laguna Beach, Calif., and will celebrate on Oahu in August with visits to his art galleries in Waikiki, Haleiwa and Ko Olina.

“I actually feel 40. It’s something about being an artist, I guess; never having to get a real job keeps you young,” Wyland said recently on the phone in the “stormy Florida Keys.”

“We just had a major torrential downpour, but it inspired some pretty good painting,” he said. “I always appreciate when we get the rain.”

Born Robert Wyland in a Detroit suburb, Wyland was drawing murals of dinosaurs at the age of 4. One of his first teachers encouraged his interest in art. He fell in love with the ocean and marine life when his parents took him on a vacation trip to California and he saw the ocean for the first time. He moved to California in 1978 and visited Hawaii for the first time a year later.

On his first stay here he lived in a little studio on Front Street in Lahaina.

“That’s really where my fine-art career began,” he said. “I used to paint on Front Street.”

But Wyland painted his first mural in Southern California. He painted his mural “Gray Whale and Calf” in Laguna Beach in 1981. In 1985 he painted “Hawaiian Humpbacks,” a mural 300 feet wide and 20 stories high, on the old Kaiser Hospital near the Ilikai Hotel.

“(The building) really lent itself to the two-worlds view of a pod of humpback whales migrating along the Hawaiian reef and then a life-size whale breaching up in the tower section,” he said. “That mural was one of my all-time favorites, and it continues to be my favorite if I have to pick one. Also (because) the Hawaii people really came out and supported it.”

“Hawaiian Humpbacks” was lost, though, when Kaiser Hospital was torn down and replaced by the Hawaii Prince Hotel. It is one of the 12 murals in the series that Wyland lists as “extinct.”

In the years that followed Wyland’s first creations, he promoted marine mammal conservation by painting 100 mega-murals on the sides of hotels, sports arenas and other large public buildings in the United States, American Samoa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Guam, Japan, New Zealand and Palau. His 100th mega-mural, “Hands Across the Oceans,” was movable. It was first shown in Beijing in 2008 and displayed in Washington, D.C., later that year.

Wyland’s marine art also appeared on letters worldwide when the United Nations printed it on postage stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in 2010.

He also got involved in supporting healthy oceans and responsible water use when he founded the nonprofit Wyland Foundation in 1993.

“Right now we’re presenting the Wyland World Water Pledge and reaching out to all 7 billion people on Earth to be water-wise in your village and your city, your state (and) your country,” he said. “To conserve one piece of water, you have to protect all of it because it’s all connected.”

Too many people waste water, Wyland said.

“We can all do a little better, and it’s very empowering,” he said. “By saving water we’re saving energy, we’re saving money — which is important — and we’re saving the environment.”