Hanneke Rozemuller’s editorial illustrations delve into daydreams and everyday anxieties

“I see philosophy and psychology as a way to curb the utter absurdity that is life,” says Hanneke Rozemuller, an illustrator from a rural village in the north of the Netherlands who creates textural images that make sense of life. Each of Hanneke’s illustrations features the detachment of selves, allowing her figures to float through a metaphysical world that only the cartoon logic can allow; a ballooned, ghost-like ego floating above someone at a computer; or heads lined up in the form of a train’s body, their thought bubbles becoming smoke stacks. What exactly this means is up to you, which is what makes Hanneke’s work so entrancing.

Working on Adobe Fresco on her iPad, Hanneke mainly does editorial work, enjoying working in themes around philosophy and psychology. “They provide some puzzle pieces to work with so there are slightly less blanks to fill,” says Hanneke. “Those are the themes that resonate with me most.” Hanneke finds inspiration by Push Pin Studios, a fledgling design studio in the 50s that began to drum up creative freelance work for forward thinking individuals. Naturally, you can see their influence in Hanneke’s work, as well as artists such as Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast and especially Linda Merad, who share visual DNA in their rendering of shadows and soft depth. Frequenting the use of blue hues, these illustrations evoke melancholy and emotional distance, but also explore internal worlds and the power of visualisation – the idea that the world can become either your dreams or your anxieties. It’s the type of subtle absurdism, a type of low-fantasy, that lends itself to editorial work so well – allowing space for the words to do the talking and the images to represent the vastness of interpretation.