Diarmad MacKinnon was born in Inverness, in the Gàidhealtachd of Scotland, in 1993. Raised amidst the glens and estates of both Highland and Lowland Scotland, he spent his formative years immersed in land, mythology, and story. With little exposure to screens, he was drawn instead to the natural world and imaginative play—world-building in solitude, carried forth on the oceanic swell of childhood. His first expressive outlets were through performance: acting, traditional dance, and music, before gleefully following the troubadour’s path into songwriting and electronic composition. During the yolk of his teenage years, he played in bands and as a solo performer, organising events and producing original work with creative collectives.
From 2011 to 2012, Diarmad studied Television Production at Edinburgh College before entering the BDes Digital Culture programme at the Glasgow School of Art (2012–14), a course encompassing filmmaking, 3D modelling, creative coding, sound art, and media theory. After this, he undertook an independent and immersive study into comparative religion and contemplative traditions—particularly the cosmologies of Abrahamic and Asian lineages—informing an ongoing commitment to philosophical enquiry and meditative practice. He is a trained practitioner in Transcendental Meditation, Zazen, and secular mindfulness.
Between 2014 and 2016, he worked as a craft operative with the GalGael Trust, engaging in outdoor, land-based, and craft-oriented learning and community regeneration projects. Part of his work during this time involved the practice of forms of embodied, place-rooted knowledge—what might be called praxis-led learning—deeply connected to questions of cultural restoration and alternative lifeways. This environment encouraged reflection on regenerative futures and ways of living beyond modernity’s dominant systems.
Following this, Diarmad worked independently as a contractor while honing his skills as a writer, researcher, and interdisciplinary artist. His literary influences during this time ranged from the mythic to the experimental—Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Italo Calvino, Homer, Thomas Pynchon—each contributing to his evolving interest in layered narrative, multiplicity, and cultural memory.
From 2022 to 2025, he studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art, expanding his practice across moving image, photography, writing, and installation. His recent work engages with mythology, ecology, language, and Indigenous knowledge systems—especially those rooted in Gaelic cosmology—exploring how ancient worldviews can be rearticulated through contemporary forms in service of ecological and cultural renewal.