For as long as I can remember, art has always been my way to express myself when it came to communicating my creative drive and passion. When I couldn’t speak or show emotion, I expressed myself through what I sketched on my paper. What once helped me express myself has not only become my passion, but has influenced the career field I want to pursue in the future.
When I got inspired from the movies I’ve watched, music I’ve listened to, and games I’ve played, I would immediately get to work on my next art piece. Nearly all of the art I aim to produce draws inspiration from movies like Interstellar and music by Djo and Depeche Mode, which help me imagine hundreds of ideas used for my original work. Even just observing my own surroundings helps me narrow down what my next piece could potentially look like.
The way I plan and create art is something I always like to experiment with the most. When inspiration roamed in my head, I would break it down as fast as I could on the margin of my notes during class, where my creativity should’ve been suppressed.
As I brought my thoughts and ideas into reality, I would let the music sink into me to set the tone of my art at the dawn of the night by listening to specific albums that match the tone of my work whenever I would draw. Sometimes, too, when I wanted to express a clearer idea on paper, I’d create mood boards using images to unify my overall concept to bring my more complex ideas to life.
One idea I enjoyed working on is a piece I did based on a real event that occurred at school: a code red lockdown in February 2026. In my experience, I was able to observe and feel a slight sense of fear through the crowded environment, and the harsh neon light peeking through the window sparked an ambitious idea in me that I wanted to express through my passion for art.
Being able to capture my near-exact perspective of the situation has shown me that something as simple as a memory can set a foundational drive towards creating art.
Another piece I enjoyed producing was not only visually inspired by the critically acclaimed video game Death Stranding, but also heavily inspired by my own visualizations of how I viewed my recollections of specific events.
‘Walk Off The Infection’ is a piece I drew to symbolize a time in my life when I felt dragged down by the people I was forming relationships with, people who silently killed my ambition and identity.
This artwork is essentially a representation of what it felt like walking away from everyone and everything that shouldn’t stay in my life, with the shoes and pants worn by the subject inspired by what I actually wear at school.
A piece I am most proud of is a revisionary artwork titled ‘Broken’, which was inspired by the song under the same name performed by Tears for Fears. The overall idea is to convey a question: Are you satisfied when you look at yourself in the mirror? With the red light bouncing off the subject and the crack in the mirror in place, this implies that the person does not feel satisfied with themselves; they feel broken.
Even though art is essentially my expression, I also treated my passion for it as a therapeutic experience growing up. As a very shy and self-centered child growing up, I would rarely speak, and when I did, I never got what I truly wanted to say across to my peers.
Being closed off from the people around me made me feel so anxious and isolated that it guided me towards my light, that being my passion for art. When my environment or mind fled to chaos, I would pick up my sketchbook and draw, something I would do often in class while some of my classmates scrolled away.
To me, drawing brings me peace even in moments where I feel overloaded by my work, responsibilities, relationships, and emotions. My drive to create art has not only influenced me to pursue the creative field, but it has also influenced me to branch out into other hobbies in which I would become heavily immersed.
Whenever I felt burned out from sketching for hours, I would experiment with other passions like music and woodworking to fill in those gaps when I still had the desire to create.
Nearly every night when most of the world is asleep, as the lights dim in my house and the rooms turn silent, I find myself at peace practicing my selection of hobbies until 3:00 a.m. Spending my time playing a new instrument like the guitar or harmonica, or sawing some wood for a project, has helped guide me back towards my core passion, but it has also shown me I can harness my creativity in countless ways beyond just a canvas.
After years of creating and accumulating various accolades, including multiple All-Florida awards for the Florida Scholastic Press Association (FSPA) and even a rank as a finalist for Artist of the Year, I can proudly say I will keep on creating for as long as I live.
Some of Justin Betancourt’s proudest works:
