Working in a bold and fantastical style, painter, photographer, and mixed-media artist Carlos Betancourt creates dynamic and fragmented pictures that merge photographic elements with imagined painted and drawn forms, as in San Sebastian, Graffiti and the Puerto Rican Countryside (Cayey) (2011). Originally from Puerto Rico, Betancourt has spent most of his artistic career in Miami, and his pictures feature a personal aesthetic and iconography he describes as “contemporized graffiti;” the works incorporate elements from his Cuban and African heritage, elevating common visual language to the realm of fine art. Betancourt’s vivid imagery and use of eye-catching materials (including glitter) to produce bold patterned compositions has been compared to that of contemporary pop artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, both of whom he acknowledges as influences.