James Swann was born in West Texas near Merkel. He
attended Sul Ross College where
Anna Elizabeth Keener and Elizabeth Keefer Boatright, two premier
Texas printmakers were to influence his future as an artist. He
worked as in Fort Worth, Amarillo and Dallas as a commercial artist
while beginning an extensive printmaking output and exhibition
career. In 1934 he received his first solo exhibition at the
Elizabet Museum in Austin. In 1935 he moved to Chicago to apprentice
with Chicago printmaker Morris Henry Hobbs. His affiliations with
art groups was impressive, The Chicago Society of Etchers; Prairie
Printmakers; Society of American Etchers; Texas Fine Arts
Association; Highland Park Society of Fine Art; Dallas Art
Association; California Printmakers Society; Southern Printmakers
Society; Southern States Art League; Oak Cliff Society of Fine Art.
In 1938
he had fifty works in an exhibition at the U. S.
National Museum in Washington, DC. In 1955 he opened a gallery. He
traveled the world and incorporated the styles of the places he
visited into this artistic creations.