Cinders McLeod grew up in Toronto. She picked up the doublebass at eight, played in the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, then moved to England where she studied art and film. After receiving her film degree in London, she became a newspaper, comic book, magazine and conference cartoonist. She was also a singer-songwriter-doublebassist in a two-woman band which toured Britain and Europe and cut a record on Billy Bragg’s label. In 1992 Cinders moved to a Scottish Island, then Glasgow where she drew regular newspaper strips and raised her two children. It was during this time she created her social comment comic strip Broomie Law for Herald Scotland, which was published in book form in 2000.
In 2001 Cinders moved back to Canada and worked for The Globe and Mail as an editorial cartoonist, writer, illustrator, designer and art director. She left in 2013 to pursue her own projects with include a historical novel about her Scottish-Canadian great-great-grandmother (for which she is learning Gaelic) and her Moneybunnies series of financial literacy picture books for children, published by Nancy Paulsen Books, N.Y, a Penguin Young Readers imprint. The first in the series, EARN IT!, was launched August 2017. SPEND IT! will be launched spring 2018, shortly followed by SAVE IT! and GIVE IT!
Cinders’ cartoons have appeared in The Guardian, The Express, The Observer, The Independent, Herald Scotland, The Scotsman, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, numerous arts, cartoon, NGO and children’s publications and on CBC television. Her work has been recognized by the Society for News Design, The National Newspaper Awards, the National Magazine Awards and The Guinness Book of Records.
She has been exhibited all over the world and is one of the few published women political cartoonists. In 2014 she made a video, for a political cartoon exhibition in Glasgow, called My Life as a Political Cartoon (http://bit.ly/1thU5VP), which looks at the history of political cartoons and women cartoonists’ exclusion. This video was shown in a major exhibition of women’s cartoons in London’s Cartoon Gallery in 2017. She also has a 7-year running autobiographical blog, My Life as a Sketchbook, at cindersmcleod.tumblr.com.
Cinders has taught political cartooning at Youth Clubs U.K., Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow and York University and is now teaching financial literacy in primary schools
Follow Cinders on instagram @cindermcleod and twitter @cindersmcleod