John Kitses is a watercolor painter and printmaker. He graduated from  Rice University in Houston, where he studied painting and printmaking,  and has worked in fine art silkscreen printing, photo retouching,  publishing, and digital design. He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

In 2019 he received a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts for  “Recovered Landscapes: Newtown Creek,” a series of ten large-scale  watercolor panoramas of an environmentally damaged industrial waterway.  Partial proceeds of the show were donated to the Newtown Creek Alliance,  an environmental nonprofit organization. In 2023 he received a grant  from the New York Foundation for the Arts to fund the production of  “Last Days at the Iron Triangle,” a book of risograph prints of  watercolors made at Willets Point, an industrial neighborhood in New  York threatened by development. Copies of the book were distributed to  the people who work in Willets Point, whose auto repair shops were being  displaced, and who contributed their stories for the book.