Cinders McLeod was born in Toronto, Canada in 1960. She was encouraged to cartoon from an early age by her father, who was a newspaper photo-engraver and an amateur cartoonist. McLeod studied music, and was double bassist with the Toronto Youth Symphony Orchestra. She then moved to England, where she studied theatre, drama, and art at Harrow School of Arts, Dartington College, and Somerset College of Arts and Technology. She also performed political songs as the double-bass-playing half of a female act, Clea and McLeod.
After working for a time in London, McLeod got married, and moved to the Isle of Bute in Scotland. She began contributing travel illustrations to the Glasgow Herald, and then was asked to produce a weekly cartoon, which resulted in the launch of her Broomie Law strip in 1996. “What I wanted Broomie Law to be was a voice of the people”, McLeod later recalled: “Newspapers are full of the voices of politicians, but we rarely hear what real people have to say.”McLeod later began contributing material to the Herald’s Saturday Magazine, and moved into Glasgow, with her husband and two children.
In 2002 McLeod returned to Toronto to work on the Globe and Mail, working for ten months as editorial cartoonist, and then as Art Director/Design Editor for the Life and Arts sections.
5 uncatalogued originals [CM00001 – 0008] (1990s)