Orlando Rafael Quevedo was born on Janauary 1st, 1970 in Holguin, Cuba. At an early age he showed an interest in fine arts and specifically drawing. He started his fine art education in 1982, attending the highly respected vocational school of art. At the age of 8 he won the first prize at the National Celebration of the History of Cuba Competition, surpassing 14 to 18 year old students. He continued his studies at the Professional School of Fine Art in Holquin, where only five students are chosen to attend. Orlando received his Masters Degree from the Superior Art Institute of Havana, Cuba in 1993.

One of the first works which one can observe his promising talent for painting was an oil portrait painting of his grandmother. Until this Day the portrait is featured in one of the most important art school museums in Cuba.

At the young age of 35, Orlando, is the nation's proponent of "Magical Realism". Magical Realism is an aesthetic style in which magical elements blend with the real world. His paintings portray these magical elements as realistic as possible, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same subject matter.

A typical Orlando painting may include representations of works by renowned artist such as Chagall, Degas, Lautrec, Miro, Monet, Mucha , O'keefe, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh.

Inspired by his favorite artists, Peter Paul Rubens, Velazquez and Rembrandt, he continues to pay homage to these "Masters" as he combines their techniques to create the light, drama and movement that clearly define a continually evolving Baroque, surreal and magical style. When asked about why he loves paying homage to the masters in his paintings, he states that during his time at the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art he felt that it was a natural progression to include some of the paintings he spent years observing. Orlando is a master of the light and shadow technique, the depiction of light and shadow is an important technique to represent illusory space in a painting. Without light, nothing can be seen but with shadow and shade objects and the Space surrounding them can be realistically defined.

Orlando explains that the hardest thing for a fine artist is to give the spectator an impression of a three dimensional world on a flat canvas. This is when a lot of artists go wrong.