Danish Illustrator Liv Hansen: Quiet Scenes and Vintage Storytelling

As a Danish illustrator, I'm rarely setting out to capture something grand. It’s more often the small, familiar human things that hold my attention — details that feel like they’ve always been there (and in a sense they have).

A small Danish train platform, inspired by mid-century Denmark and the atmosphere of Matador.

The drawing began with the image of a small Danish train platform — the kind of place that exists all over the country, often unchanged for decades. I’m drawn to scenes like this: a quiet moment between departures, people waiting, a train arriving somewhere familiar. It isn’t really about travel as much as atmosphere — the feeling of a place that has been there long before and will likely remain long after.

Danish Illustrator Focused on Quiet, Narrative Scenes

The scene is loosely inspired by the small local stations that still exist across Denmark and visually inspired in part by Matador — the classic Danish TV series known for its portrayal of life in Denmark before and after WWII.

For the train design itself, I looked briefly at the work of my great-grand-uncle, Aage Rasmussen — the Danish illustrator known for his iconic posters of trains and Danish travel, with images that captured both place and atmosphere. The setting isn’t an exact place or time, but it carries something of that world. The scene isn’t really about travel; it’s about a moment in time.

My work as a Danish illustrator often draws on memories, imagined and inherited, shaped by the mood of mid-century Denmark. It’s not nostalgia for any one thing — more the atmosphere of the ordinary moments people hold on to without realizing it.