The Story of 5 Dogs Creative Haus

Welcome! I'm so glad you're here...

Hi! I'm Ryn Sloane

I don't remember a time when I wasn't creating something. As a kid, I was always coloring, always drawing.

Later, as I was starting high school, my parents announced their divorce. That's when I started pouring myself into art every chance I got, headphones in, the second school let out. It was my escape, the one place I could go where nothing mattered and I felt better.

I went to college for graphic and package design and ended up getting kicked out twice for pushing the envelope instead of staying inside the box like everyone else. 😝

Falling into hairstyling was my next adventure and I loved it so much. I thought "this is it! I found my purpose" and even opened my own studio later in my career, in my home, in my late twenties.

At thirty, about a week before my wedding, I was in a multi-car accident on the biggest, busiest highway in Canada. The highway was at a standstill, and someone pulled me from my totaled car that only had one payment left on it 🤦🏻‍♀️. Somehow I didn't have a visible scratch, which I still can't make sense of. I ended up showing up to my own wedding internally bruised everywhere and did my best to have a great time anyway.

A little while later, I was forced to retire from hair, almost a decade into the industry, because my neck was "permanently" sprained. The thing I thought was IT… gone, and I was back to square one, again.

And that was just the beginning...

My husband and I got the chance to relocate to San Antonio, Texas. We decided to take life by the horns and move sight unseen with our two dogs at the time.

In my early thirties, I went through a brutal pregnancy, an emergency c-section, and four surgeries in four years just to put my body back together. It was really hard, but I was also so grateful that I was a mom to an incredible little boy.

About four years later, we moved to Maryland, and six months later, right as life FINALLY felt like it was turning a corner, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Are you fucking kidding me?!

Within 6 weeks, I was diagnosed, had a double mastectomy, weighed 99lbs, and had to make myself learn to walk because my body was in total shock.

But here's the thing…

Through every single one of those chapters, I kept coming back to the same place: a sketchbook, a canvas, my journal. Art was always there for me, to express myself through colors, lines, and words. It helped me get things out, and I never needed to make anything on the page pretty or perfect. Sometimes the pages were full of joyful moments, and other times, they were dark and heavy.