The digital artist I'd like to highlight is Maciej Mizer aka "mOsk".  He seems highly regarded among some of the different sites I visited, and his work was highlighted on the cover and within the pages of the popular annual "Web Design Index" Volume 8.

Here is an interesting example of his work.  This image is titled "Reawakening" and is linked from the Behance network site.

This iamge is very bright, exciting, flowing, kinetic, explosive, colorful, and has a very lively feel to it.  At the same time I get the sense that the subject within the frame is struggling to break free of something, perhaps his own emotions or circumstances. I perceive a subtle religious influence to the orientation of the person's body, specifically in the style of Jesus being crucified. This is maybe just a desire to present a connotation of spirituality or maybe that if the message is reawakening, then many religious individuals associate commitment or devotion to a spiritual path a sort of reawakening of their soul.

Stylistically, I admire this artists techniques because this image is both, dark and contrasting, yet bright and colorful within the center of focus which really sharpens the focus of the viewer towards the action of the center of the image.  His use of light to "spotlight" the subject works well here.  I'd imagine to even be able to approach something like this, I would have to master among other things my use of paths.  Many elements within this image are artificially created and added to a real picture of a person.  The flowing nature of these elements looks as if paths were drawn all around parts of the image of the person.

Here is a second image from mOsk titled "Afterlife":

I love the way this elaborate digital image is centered within a frame presenting the perspective of "the artist" who has "painted" the colorful image within the canvas.  This works as an attempt to mix reality with fantasy, with the overlap of these two realms blurred by the fact that elements such as the planes are flying out of the painting.  In an inverted sort of way as well, things from the "real world" like McDonald's restaurant, have found there way inside the fantasy world depiction of the afterlife.  Perhaps this is another riff on the art-imitates-life-imitates-art concept, or the artist wants to ask the question what is real and what is imaginary, and maybe he believes it's  hard to tell.  From the perspective of this image being presented as a depiction of the afterlife, it is telling that he chose to include the explicit imagery of the tools of the artist (paint, brushes, canvas, etc).  I'd presume this is his way of highlighting that any concept of an afterlife is fundamentally someone's personal depiction or work of art, and is simply a creation of their imagination and should not be taken as fact or absolute truth.

The second artist I'd like to highlight is Joker84, who I found on deviant art when researching the big idea of "freedom".  I feel many of this artist's works revolve around the emotional and psychological feeling of being free.... many of his/her images are of expansive, fantasy-themed landscapes that evoke an epic dreamlike feeling.  Also present within many of these images is a small, silhouetted figure gazing off into the abyss of some elaborately created horizon. 

Here is an example titled "I feel free":

Another called "Enjoying Freedom 4th" :

A third called "Enjoying Freedom 3rd":

I like that the artist used a universal blank subject to play an "everyman" gazing off into his own imagination.  Freedom can come in many forms, but ultimately and fundamentally one wished to obtain freedom of thought, and freedom to pursue one's dreams.  There are so many emotional evocations coming from these images.  There is some overlap in the ideas of freedom and dreams within them. I like how there is a natural element present in these that most likely is part of real photos of landscapes that is then merged with that created imaginary parts.  I would love to incorporate these types of elements and themes in my work.  A mastery of blending and selecting techniques would help to create the wonderful skylines and landscapes.