The art of becoming: Breanna Hextall and the freedom to create

An artist, mother and entrepreneur whose story is a beautiful reminder that creativity can take MANY forms.

By Alexandra Raven | The Raven Journal | Artist Spotlight

There is something extraordinary about the human ability to create.

Creativity is one of the greatest gifts we possess, and it can look entirely different from one person to the next.

At just 29 years old, Breanna Hextall has already lived through many different chapters, from becoming a mother at a young age to building her own business, finding love and rediscovering her passion for art.

The Woman Behind the Art

From the moment I connected with Breanna, I could tell she had a vibrant soul. There was something about her energy, the way she expressed herself and spoke about the things she loved, that made me want to learn more about the woman behind the art.

She is truly one of the most beautiful people, inside and out, and her determination and discipline are inspiring. Whether she realizes it or not, I believe her story has the power to inspire so many others.

“My name is Breanna, and like to think I’m a creative person. I’m a mother and a wife. My daughter is nine and a half, her name is Myrah, and my husband’s name is Lance. They are my little cheerleaders, always on board for whatever I decide to take on next.”

When Breanna says she likes to think she’s creative, I believe she’s being just a tad humble. Her creativity extends far beyond any one medium, finding its way into nearly every aspect of her life.

“I would say my art is broad. I like to draw and paint, physically and digitally, but I also like to sculpt, make jewelry and create in all other parts of my life.”

See what I mean about her being humble? This girl is a creative genius!

“My creative style really does flow with whatever I may feel. Sometimes I want to do watercolour, but other days I want to just sketch with a pen. Some days I like to paint in a cartoon style, but other days I tackle a more realistic approach.”

Breanna is also a boss lady! She owns a lash and brow studio, where she’s created employment opportunities for three other women.

“Although I don’t like to identify with my job, being a lash artist and now owning a studio that gives employment and opportunity to my team of three other girls, we also get to do a lot of creating in that space with all the services we offer.”

While Breanna has built a life filled with different creative pursuits, her story began long before she ever owned a business.

Where It All Began

Born and raised in Regina’s north end, Breanna is a first-generation Canadian whose parents immigrated from the Philippines as young adults.

Her upbringing is an experience many Canadians can relate to, growing up with family roots that extend beyond the country they call home.

“I had a normal upbringing, I suppose. Back when you could buy a house for $32,000 and raise a family in it.”

Breanna remembers her parents working hard to provide for their family, which meant spending plenty of time at home while they were away at work.

“My parents worked hard, always working to give us what we needed. I remember being home alone a lot. My dad would work nights, sleep all day, and my mom worked 12-hour shifts at the hospital.”

Her parents divorced when she was around 12, and after her father returned to the Philippines, Breanna spent the remainder of her teenage years living with her mother and older sister.

If there’s one thing Breanna learned early in life, it was the value of working hard.

“I remember on my 15th birthday my sister made us take a city bus to the Cornwall Centre so I could find a job. I landed my first job as a sales associate at Call It Spring.”

“I worked there for several years, along with a few other mall jobs. For as long as I can remember, the moment I could legally work, I was always working. Always wanting to grind and make money, in hopes I could afford a good life eventually.”

Long before life became filled with work and responsibilities, Breanna had already discovered her first passion, a love for art that would stay with her no matter how busy or difficult life became.

A Little Girl With a Big Imagination

Breanna has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember.

“People say I must have been born with it, but I disagree. I remember being around four years old and practicing the same stickmen scene over and over, with a sun drawn in the corner and hills in the back.”

Sometimes, you don’t have to be a prodigy or be born with a natural talent. You just have to have passion and the willingness to keep trying, and I believe Breanna did just that.

Like many young artists, she had her favourite characters she wanted to recreate, but getting them to look the way she imagined often took more than one attempt.

“I would try to imitate the likeness of my favourite Disney characters on paper and do it over and over, and I would get fed up when it wouldn’t look the way I wanted. That didn’t discourage me though, I kept trying.”

I love that memory because you can picture this little girl sitting there with her drawings, determined to get them just right.

As she grew older, Breanna’s life began to change, and the freedom she once had to sit down and create became harder to find.

When Life Takes Over

“Although all my life I’ve been generally a very creative person, I think around the time I was 18 years old, when I got pregnant with my daughter Myrah and became a single mom, I kind of lost touch with my creativity because I was mainly always in survival mode.”

“For many years I feel like I lost that creative side of me because I was just too busy being a 24/7 mom all the time.”

I think many people can relate to putting parts of themselves aside while trying to take care of everything and everyone around them.

Breanna’s life was now focused on raising her daughter, working and finding stability.

“It wasn’t until I met my husband in my mid-to-late twenties where he gave me that stable home life, where I was able to really sit down and have a space to create and not feel like I always have to get up and go to the next apartment or next townhouse or different city.”

“I knew that I was in a place where I could just have all of my art supplies and all of my stuff in one place, and I would never have to go anywhere else.”

It’s easy to take something like having a dedicated space for your hobbies for granted, but for Breanna, it meant so much more.

When you’ve spent so much of your life in survival mode, constantly working, moving and worrying about what comes next, it can be difficult to break out of that routine.

Even when life becomes more stable, learning to slow down and enjoy the things you love without feeling guilty takes time.

There’s something so beautiful about finding someone who makes you feel safe, supported and loved enough to rediscover the parts of yourself you may have put aside along the way, and I think Breanna would agree.

“I feel like his love and nourishment is what helped me become an even more creative person because I had all the support and I had a safe space to do it in.”

Now she approaches her thirties, Breanna has developed a new appreciation for what art brings into her life.

“I feel like it sounds super cliché to say that art is an escape, but truly it is. Now that I’m in my last year of my twenties, I’ve come to learn that you don’t find yourself, you create yourself.”

“I think that having art as an outlet has truly become what keeps me mentally sane and thriving. It keeps me thinking, keeps me on my toes, and keeps me excited to keep creating.”

“I feel like my body can’t keep up with all the ideas I have!”

After hearing about everything she’s been working on, I can understand why! 

A Creative Mind That Never Stops

One of the most entertaining things about getting to know Breanna is discovering just how many different ways she finds to create.

At her lash and brow studio, for example, her work involves much more than simply providing a beauty service.

“With my career, owning a lash and brow studio, I feel like I can be creative in the way that I make content, whether that be educational or funny, or when I’m designing lash maps.”

“I get to really sit down with clients and do a consultation and create a specific lash map that fits their eye or fits their face, so I feel like even with my career, I’ve made it so that I’m able to create pretty much in every part of my life, whether that be at work or at home.”

I actually first came across Breanna’s page when she was showing off one of her more unique creative projects, building a paludarium for her frog!

“I have a love and passion for exotic animals, and I do own two different species of frogs. I have a blue-horned Pacman frog named Houdini.”

“With Houdini, I got to create a different kind of bioactive terrarium environment versus the one that I have for my milk tree frog named Bean. I actually built a paludarium for Bean, and both of these required a lot of extensive research and supplies and time and design, but I really enjoy doing that.”

“So I feel like even with my pets I enjoy creating and doing art in that way.”

So yes, even her frogs get their own custom-designed environments, and I think that’s such a cool example of how creativity can show up in the most unexpected places.

Breanna somehow still makes time for more traditional forms of art, although some of her projects have turned out to be a little more ambitious than she anticipated.

“I love to paint. I love to do some sculpting every now and then. I was doing some papier-mâché this summer just to give it a go, where I was working with wire and papier-mâché and drywall and paint.”

“That project is still in the works. I feel like that one was a bit big of a bite to take on to chew.”

She also enjoys creating digitally, particularly through Procreate on her iPad.

“I feel like that’s the main go-to because I have unlimited textures and supplies and brush strokes and pen strokes that I can work with on my iPad with Procreate, and I just love that because it’s basically unlimited to what I can create.”

Then naturally the creative she is, when she’s in the mood to make something she can wear, she turns to jewelry.

“I took a wire-making jewelry class this last summer, and now I feel like that’s my thing for making jewelry. I love using different kinds of gauges of wire, adding beads and resin shapes to it.”

Her handmade pieces were a hit at a recent Halloween trade show at Conexus, where she also had the opportunity to share her work with others.

Believe it or not, Breanna’s creative ventures don’t stop there! I know, it’s hard to believe, but this woman is unstoppable!

An unexpected journey

Alongside her artwork and studio, Breanna has also been working in wedding content creation, capturing moments from couples’ special days and turning them into videos they can share and enjoy.

Her very first wedding brought an unexpected amount of attention.

“My clips actually went super viral.”

Breanna estimates the videos received several million views altogether, somewhere between five and ten million, although she wasn’t certain of the exact number.

“That was the first wedding that I had filmed content creation for, and so that’s kind of what blew up the wedding content creation for me to end up getting booked until next year.”

Interesting how a little passion, curiosity, and fun will open unexpected doors.

She was also contacted about participating in the Saskatchewan Bridal Show, although with everything else happening in her life, she ultimately decided not to take on the additional commitment.

“I had a lot on my plate, had a lot of trade shows going on. I had just gotten married, and then it was back to school, and I knew I had the big Halloween trade show.”

Girl, I don’t think anyone would judge you for that! I’m over here wondering how you manage to do it all!

Between running her studio, creating art, raising her daughter, getting married, caring for her frogs and exploring new opportunities, Breanna certainly has plenty to keep her busy.

What I found especially interesting, though, is that despite everything she’s accomplished, success isn’t necessarily what motivates her to create.

Do It Because You Love It

When I asked Breanna about her hopes and goals for the future, her answer was a little different from what you might expect.

“I don’t think I necessarily have hopes and goals for my future creative-wise. I think that I just really love to do things because it makes me happy and it fulfils parts of my life that other things just can’t.”

“I think that I need to be creative in all aspects of my life, whether that be being a wife, being a studio owner, being a mother, being a pet owner. I need to always somehow have a creative twist and throw it into that.”

For Breanna, creating isn’t something that needs to come with a particular outcome, and she’s learned not to put too much pressure on herself to turn every idea into a success.

“I think also maybe the reason I don’t get super upset when things don’t work out is because I’m not expecting things to bring me success.”

“I’m just doing it because I love to do it and it just so happens to become successful.”

“I think that you have to not have expectations of yourself to become successful in the art that you do because then you’re not really doing it for yourself. You’re just doing it to be successful, and I feel like that defeats the purpose.”

“You should just be doing it because you love it and you need that in your life.”

Breanna also believes having a creative outlet can make a meaningful difference when life becomes difficult, particularly for people experiencing depression or anxiety.

“I think that being creative is what takes people out of, you know, depression, anxiety. It gives you a reason, essentially.”

Everyone’s experiences are different, but there’s something worth appreciating about having an activity that brings us joy, gives us something to look forward to and allows us to express ourselves without needing anyone else’s approval.

The Beauty of Trying

Through her work as a lash artist, Breanna spends plenty of time talking with clients, and she says those conversations often turn toward her creative projects, businesses and the things she’s been trying.

“When you’re doing lashes, you sit down with your clients and really get to know them because you’re sitting with them maybe biweekly for an hour to two hours.”

“I feel like I talk a lot about my side hustles and my creative outlets, but I always tell people to not be afraid of failing.”

“Failing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think that people think that failing is bad because it has a negative notion to it, but you can’t succeed at things without failing.”

Everything Breanna shared throughout our conversation left me feeling so warm inside because I could relate to so much of what she was saying, but this next part especially resonated with me.

“I think that failure is just proof of the fact that you try, and I think that trying is cool. I think that caring and giving a shit is super cool.”

Amen! One day, we’ll all grow old, and so many of the things we worry about today won’t matter nearly as much. What will matter are the things we held ourselves back from doing.

“I don’t think that there’s necessarily a one, two, three step on how to be a creative person. I think that you just do it.”

“You think of something and you just try your best and just keep doing it over and over and over again until you’re satisfied, and it doesn’t have to please anybody else but you.”

“I think that it doesn’t have to make sense to anybody else but you, and if you’re happy doing it, then that’s all that matters.”

Breanna is a perfect example of someone who takes her own advice. She’s always willing to try something new, explore different creative outlets and see where her curiosity takes her.

And I have a feeling she’s only getting started.

What’s next

Breanna continues to sell her art prints and handmade jewelry, with hopes of expanding her collection of prints in the future.

And because she apparently hasn’t explored quite enough creative outlets already, she’s added another new skill to her list.

“I also recently purchased a sewing machine. I figured I’d give a whack to that too, and maybe finish that papier-mâché project I started in the summer.”

Whether she ends up sewing, painting, designing jewelry, filming weddings or discovering something entirely different, it’s clear Breanna has no shortage of curiosity or enthusiasm for the things she loves.

You can follow her creative journey and support her work through Instagram at @BreannaRaae, or explore more of her artwork at @solelyspirited.

A Note From the House

I have to say, getting to know Breanna through this feature has been such a wonderful experience, and there were moments while reading her answers when I found myself getting emotional because I could relate to so much of what she shared.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about sharing people’s stories. We can come from completely different backgrounds, experience different hardships, pursue different passions and still find so much of ourselves in another person.

What stood out to me most about Breanna wasn’t how many things she creates or how successful some of her projects have become. It was how much she genuinely loves what she does, how openly she talks about the difficult chapters of her life and how willing she is to encourage someone else to give their own ideas a chance.

There’s something incredibly special about people who remind us that we don’t need to have everything figured out before we begin, we are not alone, and that caring about something is never a waste of time.

Breanna, thank you for taking the time to share your story with me and for being so open about your experiences. I admire the life you’ve worked so hard to build, the love you have for your family and the enthusiasm you bring to everything you create.

I hope you know how much your story has to offer, not just to other artists, but to anyone who’s ever had to put their dreams aside, start over or find the courage to try something new.

It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you, and I can’t wait to see where your creativity takes you next.

The Raven Journal | House of Raven