Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Bell.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My path to where I am today definitely wasn’t a straight one.
I’ve always been creative, but I don’t think I understood early on that art could become the foundation for the life and career I have today. Like a lot of artists, I spent years figuring out where I fit, trying different things, working different jobs, and learning a lot about myself along the way.
Eventually, murals changed everything for me. There was something about creating art at that scale, in public, where it became part of a place and belonged to more than just the artist. I realized pretty quickly that murals could be much more than decoration. They could tell stories, create pride, bring people together, and completely change how a space feels.
In 2019, I co-founded We Are Limitless Studios on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. What started primarily as a mural company has grown into something much bigger. We’ve now created murals throughout the region for cities, schools, businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations, while also developing community paint experiences, educational programs, public art consulting, and opportunities for other artists.
One of the biggest evolutions for me was creating Shore Walls, our public art festival. Through that work, I’ve gotten to see firsthand what happens when you don’t just put art in a community, but actually invite the community into the process. Hundreds of people have picked up brushes and helped create murals with us. Kids have painted alongside professional artists. Businesses, local governments, nonprofits, musicians, volunteers, and residents have all come together around these projects.
That has really changed the way I look at what I do.
Today, I don’t see myself as someone who simply paints murals. I’m much more interested in how public art can be used as a tool for connection, education, economic development, tourism, and community pride. I’m especially passionate about doing that work here on the Eastern Shore and helping smaller communities recognize what’s possible in their own towns.
We’re still growing and figuring things out, and I think that’s part of the story too. Building a creative business has come with plenty of challenges, failures, pivots, and lessons. But every year the vision has gotten clearer.
The mural might be the thing people ultimately see on the wall, but bringing people together around it has become the part of the work that means the most to me.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Definitely not. It’s been incredibly rewarding, but far from a smooth road.
Long before We Are Limitless Studios, I had already gone through some pretty difficult chapters in my life. I’ve been in recovery from substance abuse for around 15 years now, and that experience shaped a lot of who I am. I had to learn how to rebuild my life, trust myself again, and believe that I could create something completely different from where I had been.
Building a creative business brought its own set of challenges. There isn’t exactly a roadmap for becoming a full-time muralist, let alone building a company around public art on the Eastern Shore. I’ve had to learn almost everything through experience: pricing projects, managing clients, hiring artists, navigating contracts, working with municipalities, securing funding, producing events, and figuring out how to keep a creative vision alive while also running an actual business.
Financial uncertainty has probably been one of the hardest parts. Creative work can be very feast or famine. You can have an incredible year, a calendar full of projects, and then suddenly find yourself wondering where the next project is coming from. I’ve had moments where things looked extremely successful from the outside while behind the scenes I was trying to figure out how to keep everything moving.
I’ve also had to learn that growth doesn’t always look like doing more. Sometimes it means changing direction, letting go of ideas that aren’t working, asking for help, building a team, or realizing that my role doesn’t always have to be the person holding the paintbrush.
But I think a lot of those struggles have ultimately shaped the philosophy behind We Are Limitless Studios. I’ve learned over and over again that where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’re going. A difficult season doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path.
I’m still learning that lesson, honestly. I don’t think you reach some point where everything suddenly becomes easy. You just become more capable of navigating the uncertainty and more confident in the bigger vision you’re working toward.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We Are Limitless Studios is a public art company based on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but our work has taken us throughout Maryland and beyond. At the simplest level, we create murals, but what we really specialize in is using public art to bring people together.
We’ve had the opportunity to create work in Baltimore, and we’re excited to have another opportunity to paint in the city coming up as well. We love being based on the Eastern Shore, but we’ve never viewed our work as limited to one area. We’re interested in working with communities anywhere that see the value public art can bring to a place.
We work with cities, schools, businesses, nonprofits, developers, and community organizations to create large-scale public artwork. Sometimes that’s a traditional mural where our team handles everything from concept through installation. Other times, we create projects where students, employees, residents, or entire communities actually help paint the mural alongside us.
That participatory side of the work has become a huge part of who we are. There’s something powerful about walking past a mural years later and being able to say, “I helped paint that.” It creates a completely different relationship between people and the places they live.
We’re probably best known on the Eastern Shore for our murals and for Shore Walls, the public art festival we created in Downtown Salisbury. Shore Walls brings professional artists, community members, businesses, music, and programming together around the creation of new public art. In 2026 alone, the festival produced seven new murals and brought thousands of people downtown over five days, with hundreds of community members participating in the painting process.
I’m incredibly proud of how much we’ve grown beyond simply being a mural company. We now offer community paint experiences, educational field trips and public art tours, consulting, youth programming, and large-scale public art initiatives. We’ve also been able to create paid opportunities for other artists and creatives, which is something that means a lot to me.
I think what sets us apart is that we don’t approach a mural as just an image that needs to go on a wall. We think about the people who will see it every day, the story of the place, who can participate in creating it, and what can happen around it.
Some of the projects I’m most proud of aren’t necessarily the biggest or most technically complicated murals we’ve painted. They’re the ones where you look around during the process and see kids painting next to their parents, strangers talking to one another, local businesses getting involved, and people becoming excited about their community.
The artwork matters tremendously, but I’ve come to believe that sometimes the most important part of a mural is everything that happens around it.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think I’ve become much more comfortable with risk over the years, but I don’t necessarily think of myself as someone who takes risks just for the sake of taking them. For me, it’s more about being willing to move before I have every answer.
Starting We Are Limitless Studios was a risk. Choosing to build a career around art was a risk. Taking on murals that were larger than anything we had done before was a risk. Hiring people and becoming responsible for creating opportunities for other artists was another level of risk entirely.
Shore Walls was probably one of the biggest examples. Creating a multi-day public art festival meant committing to artists, walls, equipment, programming, sponsors, partners, and an entire community experience before we could know exactly how everything would come together. There were plenty of moments where I thought, “What did I get myself into?” But then you see thousands of people show up, watch new murals transform downtown, and see hundreds of people actually participate in creating them. Suddenly that risk created something that didn’t exist before.
I’ve also learned that there’s risk in playing it safe. There’s risk in waiting until you feel completely ready. There’s risk in staying with something because it’s comfortable even when you know you’ve outgrown it.
A lot of the biggest steps in my life have required me to believe in something before there was much evidence that it was going to work. That doesn’t mean being reckless. I try to understand what I’m getting into, surround myself with good people, and prepare as much as possible. But eventually there comes a point where planning can’t take you any further and you have to move.
I’ve failed plenty of times. I’ve spent money on ideas that didn’t work. I’ve taken on projects that taught me very expensive lessons. I’ve said yes to things and later realized I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was. But almost every major leap forward in my life came from being willing to step into something that felt a little bigger than I was at the time.
These days, when I’m considering a risk, I try not to only ask myself, “What happens if this doesn’t work?” I also ask, “What could happen if it does?”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wearelimitlessstudios.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearelimitlessstudios
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreLimitlessStudios
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-1111-bell/
