James MacSwain (1945 - Sept. 9, 2025) was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia. He received a B.A. in English from Mount Allison University and studied theatrical arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. After traveling and living in Europe, he settled in Halifax, where he began a career in theatre and arts administration. From 1980 onward, he worked in film and video, receiving Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Nova Scotia Arts Council grants as a media artist. As a visual artist he worked in photo and collage-based images that he were exhibited in Halifax and across Canada. He was an honorary member of Live Art Dance Productions and the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, and a board member of the Nova Scotia Arts Council, the Independent Film and Video Alliance, the Linda Joy Media Arts Society, and the Canadian Conference of the Arts. He also served on the Exhibitions Committee of Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and was Director of Programming for the Centre For Art Tapes.

In 2011, James received the Portia White Prize, Nova Scotia's highest cultural honour. He is also the subject of Celestial Queer, a feature documentary by Eryn Foster and Sue Johnson. Quoted in a remembrance published by NSCAD online, Eryn Foster had this to say: “I often talk about Jim as an example of someone who’s found really experimental and alternative ways to exist on this earth, whether it’s through living in a communal house or working in an incredibly interdisciplinary way. Jim being a model for all the possibilities, all of the things that NSCAD attempts to and wants to represent as an institution. He was there teaching these things; I think even just through his existence, he offers the rest of us a model for what life can look like as an artist.”

Artist Code: 138