McKinniss's work has been shown in galleries and museums since 2005. His first solo show in New York, entitled "Black Leather Sectional," opened at Joe Sheftel Gallery in May 2015 and his first solo show in Los Angeles, "Dear Metal Thing," opened at Team Bungalow in June 2015. His show "Egyptian Violet" opened at Team Gallery in New York in October 2016. He made his first appearance at the Miami edition of the international art fair Art Basel in 2015. McKinniss paints in two distinct but complementary practices: representational works which are both seductive and funereal; and grey-scale abstractions. The two styles provide tension and counterpoint within his oeuvre. In his figurative painting, which has become the dominant practice, McKinniss works from photographs, found images as well as pictures he took. His subjects include reclining male nudes, floral still lifes, and images from popular culture. McKinniss develops a symbolist vocabulary for contemporary figurative painting; he sources material primarily from online image searching. He has painted a wide range of celebrities including Diana Princess of Wales, Prince, Tyra Banks, Whitney Houston, Madonna and Lil' Kim, as well as fictional film and television characters such as Edward Scissorhands, Catwoman, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. McKinniss is interested in moments of unexpected emotional conflict, aggression and sexuality, defensiveness and vulnerability, pathos and humor. Seemingly disparate pop cultural icons are portrayed without cynicism in the artist's fluent painterly style. McKinniss' work is influenced by a number of eras in the history of painting, from the Baroque and Mannerist to Imagism and Abstract Expressionism. Of particular importance to McKinniss' practice are the works of Henri Fantin-Latour, a figurative French painter of the 19th Century who is known for his floral still-lives. Both McKinniss and Fantin-Latour work seek to access and distill the magic and pathos of Symbolism while limiting themselves to the knowable world: each is at once consumer and creator, curator and originator, spectator and carnivore. Fantin-Latour represents for McKinniss something close to perfection in paint, the apogee of particular skills and sensitivities. McKinniss’s embrace of Fantin-Latour demonstates his respect of history and tradition in painting. McKinniss has made a large number of paintings with titles that incorporate ‘after Fantin Latour’, and mimic the 19th-century artist’s still-lifes. Latour’s influence on his style can be seen in the heightened colour contrasts with which he paints his figurative paintings. McKinniss painted a series of "men in repose" for the second issue of Adult. His painting of Lorde was the cover art of her 2017 album MelodramaNME magazine selected the cover for their list of the bestalbum art of the 21st century so far and it received praise from commentators at Billboard, Paste and Fuse.
