In a 1982 New York Times review, critic John Caldwell observed that "the question of artistic influences is unusually complicated in the case of Mr. Kipniss" and that "the sense that one gets in all of [his] work is of a genuinely individual sensibility." While this strongly individualistic approach has been universally acknowledged by many critics and scholars since, some have found resonance between Kipniss's concerns and that of Giorgio Morandi, René Magritte, Paul Cézanne, Caspar David Friedrich, Tonalism, the Hudson River School, and the Barbizon School, particularly Camille Corot.
          Kipniss's subject matter is landscapes, interiors, and still lifes, often described as conveying solitude and inward experience. The lighting is penumbral or shadow-like; twilight and dawn are favored time settings. In his paintings Kipniss employs exceptional subtlety in tones and restrained use of color to create an overall atmospheric effect. His prints are masterly meditations on mood and light using a resticted black-and-white palette, though he has occasionally created color variants of selected prints, always employing a subtle color palette. His works in various media—paintings, drawings, and printmaking—are often interrelated, presenting variants on a theme. The paintings date from the early 1950s; the prints from 1967. His favored techniques in printmaking have been lithography and mezzotint, the former dating from 1968 into 1994, the latter since 1990.
          In keeping with his subtle and understated style, he has a unique approach to titles: the first word is capitalized, and any subsequent words are lower case, unless a proper noun; “and” is replaced by an ampersand, and “with” is shortened to “w/”.