Not every artist captures what the eye can see. Kimberly McGuiness isn’t concerned with the obvious. Her work feels like something remembered from a dream or drawn up from the soil of old stories. It doesn’t aim to document—it reveals. What she creates doesn’t sit on the surface; it comes from someplace older, deeper, and far less certain.
McGuiness returns again and again to images that carry weight: horses that don’t just run but embody freedom, peacocks full of silent symbolism, oracles who guard the thresholds between knowing and not knowing. These aren’t random visuals. They’re loaded with intent. They serve as keys to inner places. McGuiness draws from nature, myth, and the surrealism of circus lore to create pieces that feel less like paintings and more like living rituals. Her work doesn’t explain itself. It asks you to feel your way through it.
Here’s a look at three of her works that each seem to exist in their own kind of time.
Zephira the Oracle of the Realm of Beneath & Becoming
Zephira doesn’t speak loudly, but her presence is undeniable. She doesn’t exist above ground—she thrives in the hidden places, where time twists and old emotions root themselves. This is not darkness as danger. It’s darkness as depth. A place of slow growth and quiet reflection.
McGuiness presents Zephira as a guide, a protector of buried truths and forgotten feelings. Her message—“What you bury becomes what you bloom. Tend it with intention.”—isn’t gentle. It’s a reminder that what we leave unattended inside ourselves can still shape our lives. The painting invites you to sit, to listen, to reflect.
There’s likely a sense of movement in the stillness of the piece—lines like flowing roots or subterranean rivers. Zephira doesn’t demand your attention. She waits for it. Her power is not in spectacle, but in how she makes you pause.
Celtic Warrior
Aislinn isn’t imagined for effect. She’s painted with gravity. She rides into view with a past behind her and a duty in her bones. Her story isn’t about glory. It’s about cost. Her “Crown of Thorns and Valor” tells you that much—honor, yes, but earned through pain.
McGuiness doesn’t decorate her subjects. She honors them. Aislinn moves through the canvas like someone who’s lived through fire and still holds her ground. The blooming roses behind her are not just pretty—they’re reminders. Traces of what she’s survived. She’s not chasing beauty. She is beauty, forged by struggle.
This painting likely balances sharp form with a kind of softness—sunlight hitting armor, or shadow cooling a warrior’s expression. Aislinn doesn’t pose. She continues. Her strength isn’t loud—it’s steady, unwavering, and rooted in the land she guards.
The Talisman
This isn’t a painting you read left to right. The Talisman is layered, cryptic, and still. It doesn’t offer an easy message. It waits, charged with ancient energy. McGuiness builds it from fragments—memory, myth, dust. Every element hints at something lost, something sacred.
This isn’t an object of comfort. It asks you to show up honestly. To wear the talisman is to become visible, even to forces you may not fully understand. It doesn’t tell you what it means. It turns the question around. What did you forget on purpose? What part of yourself are you ready to see again?
The painting might shine or glow with precision, but it’s never closed. It invites. It challenges. And it doesn’t promise safety.
Kimberly McGuiness doesn’t deal in aesthetics alone. She makes thresholds. Her paintings are entry points—into memory, into meaning, into something quieter and older than reason. They don’t shout. They don’t explain. They offer presence.
Step into her work, and you’re not just looking. You’re remembering.
