Victoria Siemer - 'Illuminated' (2014) and 'Wish You Were Here' (2014)

Victoria Siemer, known online as Witchoria, is a graphic designer and artist based in Brooklyn's neighbourhood of Bushwick. She works in the digital art realm, and her work consists of brilliantly manipulated images that portray a sense of listlessness, heartbreak, and existential despair.

In 2014, Siemer started a series called Illuminated. Honestly, I relate so strongly to the sense of existential distress in these images that a lot of them made me catch my breath. They are haunting and beautiful.

Illuminated (2014)

I got particularly excited about this last one because in 2015 I made bunting with almost this exact wording which means Siemer and I are on the same wavelength which means one day I could be living in Brooklyn and making great art.

The emotionally loaded phrases, suspended in trees or resting on horizons, glow very slightly, subtly illuminating the ground under them or the bark around them. What I really like, though, is how the images feel. There is probably a more technical way to put this, but because Siemer puts the phrases more towards the background of many of the images, and doesn't put them slap-bang in the middle, the text feels... away. It feels like a thought, like it was conjured up by someone looking at the view or walking through the landscape. The images carry a really heavy sense of isolation, which I feel is heightened by how much landscape actually surrounds the text. The phrases feel small and genuinely very lonely.

Siemer's artistic drive doesn't only manifest itself in the outright depressing, however: a whole lot of it is really funny and playful. Take her ongoing series Wish You Were Here ​as an example:

Wish You Were Here (2014)

I mean, how great are these?

Go look at the rest of her work and feel some feelings on her Instagram, Facebook, and Behance.