an interview: the flying orchestra by clare mcfadden

The Flying Orchestra is Brisbane artist and illustrator Clare McFadden’s first picture book and, just like Clare, it is full of pure whimsy, joy and wonder. Do you know it? It won The Children’s Book Council of Australia Crichton Award and was adapted into an enchanting theatre play by internationally renowned puppetry artist, Peter Wilson (The Red Tree, How to Train your Dragon, King Kong) for the 2012 Out of the Box Festival in Brisbane. My friend Sarah took her two boys to see it and found herself shedding a tear during – it really is so beautiful.

Clare is a dear friend and I watched her work on her precious manuscript in her warehouse studio at Metro Arts. I admired the heart, soul and precise attention she poured into it over many years, never rushing the process. Since it was published in 2010 I have bought it for so many of my friends’ and family’s little ones – wrapping it with love and handing it to them with a warm glow in my heart, heartened by the delight awaiting them in its thoughtful pages. It was so special buying it for my little Bassie when he turned one last month.

In part, I started this blog to interview writers and creatives like Clare to share what happens behind the scenes as they develop their dream projects. I asked Clare some questions and this is what she replied. As you'll find, she has a beautiful way with words. 

INTERVIEW: 

Frances: What inspired the story of The Flying Orchestra?
Clare: The Flying Orchestra was inspired by a few thing things. Firstly, I wanted to create an entry point into orchestral music for small children. Unfortunately, I think there's often elitism attached to orchestral music, which is ridiculous. Music is for everyone. Secondly, I wanted to honour the deep and complex emotional responses that children have to their world. I think that a child understands their world through aesthetics and through perception - so they have this very sophisticated understanding of art and feeling – and yet, unfortunately, this is not always celebrated.

F: What message do you hope readers find in its pages?
C: I hesitate to answer this only because I think that the book has taken on a life of its own and means different things for different people, which I am thrilled about. The Flying Orchestra symbolises a myriad of things (from being a “soundtrack to your life” to something transcendent or multiple things at once) and I realise in my work with children that, even some very young children, can understand and articulate this, which I find wonderful. Most simply, I hope readers get the message that there are ordinary and extraordinary things that happen to all of us but together, these things form a symphony - and that symphony is always beautiful.

F: How did you learn to draw?
C: I learnt to draw by practicing! I never had lessons and I didn't go to art school. I was drawing from the time I was 18 months old so I still grip my pen like it is a crayon. I sometimes overhear mums say things like “you can draw and paint at kindy” – but it's not enough. I'm putting it out there to the mums reading this blog – give your child paints and pens and paper at the kitchen table. It is simple really. I think I developed some of my techniques for painting while I was at Metro Arts. I was lucky to live next to some great painters who imparted their knowledge and tricks of the trade to me. I still remember Madeleine Kelly teaching me to paint light with Matisse Magenta, yellow and white.  Thank you Madeleine!

F: What do you love about illustrating?
C: I love the challenge of conveying enough of the particular and the detail so that an illustration is grounded and reads as “real”, but still in a way that can be universally accessible and understood. Also, how to capture the essence of something rather than just accurately record - to be evocative in one's work. Vincent Van Gogh expresses this so beautifully in saying (with regards to trying to paint in a way that is not so much anatomically correct but more how something “feels”): "My great longing is to make those very incorrectness’s, those deviations, remodeling, changes in reality, so they become, yes, lies if you like - yet truer than the literal truth." It's really hard! And then having to make each of these pieces artworks in their own right, yet part of a larger body of work. It's a huge job! I tried some of the illustrations for The Flying Orchestra four or five times before I was happy with them. (You can read more about this process on Clare’s blog here)

F: What was most challenging and most rewarding about the process of creating your first children's book?
C: It was really challenging to keep going with no knowledge of how long it was going to take and whether the final product would be any good! It took me, literally, years and I was always going into the studio on weekends, and sometimes (and this may surprise you) I really hated working on it!! Sometimes I loved working on it of course – those moments when you lose yourself in your work, but that process! You just have to have faith that this is a story worth telling and keep going! I can't tell you how rewarding it is to hear children's (and adult’s) responses to the book. To think of it going out into the world and having a life of its own, of being meaningful to children - that would bring a tear to a glass eye! After the stage show adaptation at QPAC earlier this year, I heard that a little boy said to his father on the way home, “That was the best day of my life”. It doesn't get much better than that.

F: How did you secure a book deal with your publisher, the University of Queensland Press (UQP)?
C: Well, I was lucky because I submitted it and they accepted it. I know it is usually not so simple so I am very grateful to UQP for recognising something in it as the first people I presented it to.

F: Can you please share the moment when you held a published copy in your hot little hands for the first time?
C: Well, it was great of course, but you know, probably even greater was seeing it performed as the stage show this year. In many ways, because of all the sign-offs in the publishing process, the printed book doesn't really come as a surprise ... you've seen the proofs etc. But, sitting in the Lyric Theatre, and seeing the brilliant job Peter Wilson and his team at QPAC had made of bringing the book to life ... that was just so wonderful. Like the little boy, it was one of the best days of my life.

F: What's next for Clare and The Flying Orchestra?
C: Well, the second book is coming along at the speed of a relaxed snail. I'm currently based in the US doing my Masters in Arts in Education, which is sensational but all consuming. So there hasn't been a lot of time to sit at the kitchen table with the paints. Perhaps over the Christmas holidays, when it's snowing outside and I'm missing Stradbroke Island. That might be a good time to get cracking on it.

Thank you dear Clare! 

The Flying Orchestra is available at all good bookstores. I get my copies from independent bookstore Black Cat Books in Paddington, Brisbane - they always seem to have plenty of copies on the shelves. 

Images by Yan Chen

An outdoor reading of The Flying Orchestra at South Bank for Father's Day 2010.