Chris Wilder is an American visual artist who was born in Long Beach, CA in 1957 and raised surfing on the beaches of Huntington Beach, CA. He lives and works out of his studio in Santa Monica, CA creating a prolific body of work; paintings, sculptures, installations and print work. His field of inquiry ranges from thickly layered depictions of oceanic and tropical representations and deploys a wide range of media, including ambiguous encounters of an otherworldly kind. Like colleague Mike Kelley, Wilder was involved in the Los Angeles punk music scene in the late 1970s at the same time was making pieces like his UFO Sighting series. He is a senior lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and his work is held in many private, institution and museum collections.