Leonard McDermid has enjoyed over seventy years of looking at things, and over fifty years of commenting on them in various forms and in a variety of ways.
He left school at fifteen and worked at several jobs including that of papermaker, lorry, coach and taxi driver and trawlerman. He served two years as a National Serviceman in the Royal Artillery, and later studied at Medway College of Art, Brighton College of Art, Newbattle Abbey College and the University of Edinburgh.
He taught for many years, mainly in the Scottish Borders. He also undertook two appointments as artist to The Marine Society working on merchant vessels. He covered over fifty thousand ocean miles world-wide, including work on a troopship ferrying troops across the South Atlantic and on a tanker in the Arabian Gulf during the ‘Tanker War’.
McDermid established the Stichill Marigold Press in 1990; under this imprint he has produced many small artistic pamphlets. Landway won the final Callum Macdonald Memorial Award in 2017.
He currently lives in the Scottish Borders.
