As a youth, Kingswood was enamored with the work of Don Eckleberry, famed illustrator for Audubon magazine. In art school and after, Kingswood was heavily influenced by fellow Canadian, Robert Bateman. During this era, Kingswood was painting in a tight, highly realistic fashion, and achieving a great deal of commercial success. However, commercial success did not leave him spiritually fulfilled. By the mid-eighties, Kingswood felt a change was necessary; he began to pare down the detail in his work and to paint in a more expressive and impressionistic fashion. As the detail in his paintings grew looser, the canvases grew larger.