Artist Spotlight: Hannah Beisang

Ask Hannah Beisang to sum up her art in one phrase and she doesn’t hesitate: “Hope filled.” It’s a fitting description for an artist whose work is built on storytelling, warmth, and an abiding love of plants — and for someone who has learned, licensing project by licensing project, to let her art go out into the world and become something she never could have pictured herself.

Based in the Twin Cities, Hannah splits her creative attention between her personal fine art practice and the licensed collections that have landed her work on everything from greeting cards to home decor. The two sides of her work aren’t at odds so much as two different kinds of storytelling. “My personal work usually has a visual story in it that is specific to me,” she explains. “My licensing work I try to keep it more open to stories that we all go through — celebrations, losses, locations. I try to find stories that unite us as humans and our journeys through life.”

Rooted in Plants

If you want to understand where Hannah’s imagery comes from, start with her houseplants. “Being surrounded by plants — every single place I have lived, I have found spaces that connected me to nature and more directly plants,” she says. It’s a pull strong enough that she jokes about her alternate career path: if she weren’t an artist, she’d likely be a home gardener, or tending parks and public spaces. That love of greenery shows up again in what she hopes to see next on a licensed product — bedding, a natural home for her botanical, story-driven patterns.

Of all the formats she works in — pattern, illustration, typography — greeting cards hold a special place for her. “I love making greeting cards,” she says. “It combines typography from my design background, with storytelling using images.”

From Rough Thumbnail to Finished Collection

Hannah’s process starts messy, on purpose. Before mood boards or color stories come into play, she’s reaching for a pencil. “A bunch of quick, rough thumbnails just to get those ideas on paper before they float away,” is how she describes the very first step of any new collection — a habit that tracks with her description of her own studio: “A mess. I am always on 10 different projects, and they are always laying out so I don’t forget what I was doing.”

What Licensing Taught Her

Seeing her own art on a product for the first time is a moment a lot of artists describe as surreal. For Hannah, it was also humbling. “That it looked better than I even imagined,” she says, “because someone else’s imagination believed that my art should be on that object.”

That experience shaped the advice she’d give to any artist just starting to license their work: stay open. “Don’t try to control what items are ‘right’ for your art to be,” she says. “There is a wide, wide world of opportunity, you just have to be open to it.”

Reading the Room on Trends

With years in the industry, Hannah has developed her own gut check for whether she’s creating from a genuine place or just chasing a trend. “Usually with trends, I can tell if I am chasing it by how hard it is for me to draw it,” she says. “If it comes easily, generally, not chasing, just creating!”

Her forecast for what’s next: warm brown. “I think earthy and organic seems to be trending,” she says. “Also, the ’70s through ’90s all had some interpretation of a warm brown, so I think it’s coming back to visit.” And while she’s ready to see the last of sardine motifs (“I don’t get it, I tried, but I don’t”), she’s holding out hope for a ’90s kitchen classic to make its return: ducks. “Fingers crossed that they do.”

Behind the Scenes

A typical workday for Hannah involves coffee and a steady stream of BBC murder mysteries — “playing for the umpteenth time in the background,” she admits. And one of her sharpest creative tools didn’t come from art school at all: sewing. “Size of patterns matters a lot depending on what you are sewing, so I feel like this is super useful when it comes to scale and composition,” she says — a reminder that the skills that sharpen an artist’s eye don’t always look like art.

From quick thumbnail sketches to finished products on store shelves, Hannah Beisang’s work keeps circling back to the same idea: art that’s rooted in something real — nature, memory, shared experience — travels the farthest. And whatever it lands on next, she’ll be ready for it.

Season’s Storytelling

View Hannah’s Portfolio

Hannah Beisang Finds Hope in the Everyday