Born in Oakland, California, Kingman returned with his family to Hong Kong at age five. He was educated there at the Chan Sun Wen School and studied art with Szeto Wai, the Paris-trained head of the Lingnan Academy. He returned to Oakland in 1929 and attended the Fox Morgan Art School. Early on he settled on watercolor as his primary medium, and a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Art Association in 1936 brought him immediate acclaim as a watercolor painter. He painted for the W.P.A. and received two Guggenheim Fellowships. During World War II he served in the army, and after the war he settled in Brooklyn, New York. He exhibited widely throughout the nation and around the world, and his watercolor paintings are in major museum collections across the United States.
