Kimberly McGuiness doesn’t just make art—she builds experiences. Based in Georgia, McGuiness is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans visual art, surface design, and writing. Her creative process is rooted in storytelling, but not the tidy kind. Instead, she leans into complexity, ambiguity, and the edges of the human experience. There’s a rawness and vulnerability in her work that pulls you in. She uses color, texture, and symbolism to craft pieces that aren’t just meant to be looked at—they’re meant to be felt, questioned, and interpreted. McGuiness is known for taking inspiration from life’s messiness—emotional weight, unseen burdens, and unspoken truths—and translating that into layered compositions that invite reflection. Whether she’s working on a series or a single piece, there’s always a deeper current running beneath the surface. Her art challenges, listens, reveals, and connects.
One of her recent pieces, Step Right Up: The Oracle of Circus Curiosity, lands squarely in that territory.
There’s no subtle entry into this work. You’re pulled in, center ring. This is no quiet oracle perched in a misty forest. This oracle performs. She makes eye contact. She waits for yours. The setting is whimsical but charged—less carnival funhouse and more poetic reckoning. Kimberly’s use of circus imagery doesn’t mock or distract. It invites us to see theater as a mirror. There’s a balance of light and dark, play and seriousness, shadow and spotlight.
“The Oracle of Circus Curiosity doesn’t whisper, she performs.” That line sets the tone. The oracle is not hiding truth behind veils. She’s turning it into a spectacle—ribbons, tightropes, and all. The audience is complicit. The truth is there, mid-leap, and it’s our job to catch it. Or not. That’s the dare.
Kimberly calls this space the “Realm of Measured Light,” a phrase that speaks volumes. Light here isn’t blinding or all-consuming—it’s deliberate. It reveals what we’re ready to see. And maybe what we aren’t. The justice at work isn’t courtroom justice. It’s deeper, quieter. Personal. It happens under a tent of stars, where illusions fall away and only energy remains.
Then comes the oracle’s message: “Everything weighs something—especially the things we pretend not to see.” It’s a punch wrapped in velvet. Every thought, every role we inhabit, every silence carries weight. It doesn’t vanish. It sits. It waits. It shapes us. The art pushes us to acknowledge that. To notice the energetic debris we carry and ask ourselves whether we want to keep carrying it. Kimberly isn’t just giving us a performance. She’s giving us an opportunity to recalibrate.
The themes in this piece echo throughout McGuiness’s larger body of work. She’s fascinated by duality—sacred and strange, playful and profound, concealment and exposure. Her art often mixes organic textures with sharp symbols. There’s a tactile quality to what she makes, a visual rhythm that speaks to pattern and ritual, but it’s never static. It moves. It asks.
Her design background adds another layer to her visual vocabulary. She understands surface. She knows how to make meaning live in texture. But it’s not about decoration. Even the most beautiful elements carry a whisper—or a shout—of meaning. She’s fluent in metaphor, but she doesn’t hide behind it. The work stays direct.
In Step Right Up, the circus becomes a structure for unveiling truth. It’s not just spectacle—it’s ceremony. The performer becomes the priestess. The viewer becomes the witness. The question becomes: What role are you playing? And are you ready to change it?
McGuiness doesn’t answer for you. She’s not interested in neat conclusions. Her work lives in the ask. It pokes. It lingers. It leaves you holding the weight of what you didn’t want to see—and the permission to see it anyway.
That’s the thread through her work: honest confrontation softened by imagination. If you’re looking for art that entertains, you’ll find layers of beauty and theatricality. But if you’re looking for art that stays with you, shifts your footing, invites you to return again and again—McGuiness’s work offers that too.
And she’s not done asking questions.
