A car crash in late 2021 left Salem artist Timmy BeWell paralyzed from the chest down.

He spent months in the hospital and used an electric wheelchair for close to a year. While recovering, he made himself a promise: if he regained the use of his hands, he would create art every day.

BeWell kept that promise. As profiled by Press Play Salem in the publication's Fall 2026 issue, the former restaurant worker built a new creative life after his spinal cord injury. He spent roughly three years in his garage painting, experimenting with techniques, taking commissions and developing a style he calls "psychedelic Saturday morning cartoons."

His pieces are vivid and geometric, built around mandalas and symmetry. He hand-cuts wood, sands, applies gesso, paints, masks, airbrushes and finishes work in epoxy. Color, largely absent from his early drawings, now saturates every surface.

"I think inspiration and pain create good art," BeWell told Press Play Salem. He said a huge part of his recovery was learning to sit with pain and transform it into something tangible.

That garage-studio work led BeWell to enroll in Chemeketa Community College's Visual Communications program on the Salem campus. The limited-enrollment program offers two Associate of Applied Science degree tracks: graphic design and multimedia arts. Each track accepts roughly 24 students, with a hard cap of 48 across both. The program requires 96 credits over a minimum of two years.

At Chemeketa, BeWell learned to move between handmade and digital processes, plan where a finished piece will live and adapt work to different surfaces. Students in the program study graphic design, typography, web design, photography, motion graphics, animation and filmmaking. Graduates can transfer to Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland or Western Oregon University in Monmouth for a bachelor's degree.

The program expanded how BeWell saw himself. He said he once thought of himself only as a painter but now considers himself a multi-mode artist and designer.

BeWell operates under the business name BeWell Design Studios. The mandalas woven through his work function as a kind of meditation, he said, their symmetry carrying a message of connectedness.

What's next: Chemeketa's Visual Communications program holds its next overview session Wednesday, Nov. 4, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Building 4, Room 225 on the Salem campus. Applications open each spring for fall entry.