The March McFlourishing Monthly

Oh, spring! I painted and made a video about Paddington Bear.

I hung these reminders above my desk and they faded over the years. I took them down when I moved from Chicago, and this month I taped them in a notebook for safekeeping. I think the messages are borrowed from a Lynda Barry book. WASTE TIME & MATERIALS. I’m trying, Lynda!!!!!

In the month of March in the year of Twenty Twenty 5, I (Claire McF@dden) put forth the following:

• a sketch about Paddington Bear

• a painting for this song

• a few improv shows

• one powerpoint presentation from the perspective of a lizard from another world, see snippet below

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MY MUSE, PADDINGTON BEAR

I love Paddington Bear. I’m not alone in this. Millions adore Him. Or so I thought. One of the greater disappointments of my recent years occurred when I was living with my parents while recovering from knee surgery. One night I had a fantastic idea. “I know what we can watch, I know what will unite the family in laughter and love.” I put on the first Paddington film. They watched politely and at the end they said “I’m surprised you like it so much.”

Well! I guess I am a simple bear with jam on his chin. And my parents are silky foxes with starched kerchiefs.

Anyway, several years ago I wrote a sketch for an SNL packet, with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Paddington being interviewed on the Wendy Williams show. I liked the sketch and wanted to try to produce it, so I cut it down by a page and brainstormed how I could pull it off. For example, one avenue I explored involved searching eBay for a realistic Paddington stuffed toy which I could turn into a puppet. I guess I was then going to make a Wendy Williams marionette and build a fake talk show set? It didn’t happen. I landed on the “leaked audio” idea because it was doable and because–-flash forward 3 years!–-Paddington in Peru was actually out and it was now or never.

So I hired my sister to Photoshop some images of Paddington on the Kelly Clarkson show (pivot!) and hired another Chicago-to-LA comedian named Mark Denny to do a Paddington impression. I tried for about nine minutes to do an impression of Kelly Clarkson and then threw up my hands and decided “enthusiastic” was close enough. We recorded remotely using a free trial subscription to a podcasting website, meanwhile Caroline hacked up a Kelly Clarkson/Salma Hayek interview from years ago and inserted images of a subterranean skin blob on the back screen. I personally made the “car crash” image by overlaying a rotting whale carcass on roadkill and then adding and duplicating a pool of blood. 🫶

The result…

Few people saw it and few people “liked” it. It was knee surgery all over again. But you know what?

This is Raine Allen-Miller, who directed Rye Lane. I liked the movie a lot and when I heard her say this in an interview, my antennae quivered in recognition. Wait, I am a bear….my whiskers…twizzled.

Also, true Claire-heads will know that this is the second homage to Paddington Bear I’ve written. The first being a humor piece about spontaneously conceiving the entire plot of Paddington 2.

My zesty little secret is that I haven’t seen Paddington in Peru yet. Why would I? Guys, it’s for children…

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SOME HOUSE COMMISSIONS

Here are some house commissions I’ve done recently!

It just so happens that all of these were homes that have been sold and are no longer in the family, and the paintings were commissioned as gifts to the people who grew up there. It was very sweet to draw them, knowing that.

If you’d like to commission me, here is your gateway.

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A PAINTING OF A SONG

I am so pleased to share the first painting in a series I did for Wingtip’s upcoming album. The first single is called You, Me, and the Flood (Here it is on Spotify and on Apple Music). I hope you listen to the song! It’s really romantic and light and I love it.

I’ll write more about the whole process when the album and all the corresponding artwork is released. But I thought it would be interesting to see the trail of thumbnails that led to the final piece for this song.

You can see I went on some tangents. But that’s all in retrospect. Because we know now what the final piece looks like. You have to remember…I didn’t know that when I started…

….And the final piece!

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SOME SKETCH BOOK

Something cool that came out of doing the Wingtip commissions is that I started using acrylic paint in earnest. After each session, I’d always have leftover paint on my palette (a sheet of tinfoil), which I didn’t like to waste. So I started using it up in my sketchbook. I would usually reach this point after hours of working on the album art, so I was tired and ready to be done, which means I was painting very quickly and just making shapes. My discovery was that it’s really fun to paint that way. I usually draw something, I paint something. So this was genuinely my first time mashing paint around, since childhood, I guess.

Then I was inspired to take the playfulness and apply it to painting something. So I spent a Saturday afternoon in my yard drawing my garage, like a proper American.

I feel like I unlocked something. An ease, just messing around. And sharing the process and results loosely as well, now. Trying to stay in the lightness.

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Great news: I swam in the Pacific! Very cold, as you can imagine. I went in right after a run—my favorite—and it felt amazing to sit on a rock in the sun afterwards (like a lizard, like a bear, like a bug). You’re not supposed to swim in LA right now, because of runoff from the fires. But we were in San Diego, so I took advantage.

Oh, and mark you calendars! If you live in LA, we are throwing a live premiere and screening the web series I’ve been working on this past year. I wrote and acted in it, Will Sonheim directed and edited it. There will be a lineup of other funny videos, it’s free, and I’m going to overdo it preparing a merch table and photo area. It will be on Thursday, April 24th in Frogtown. Message me for the address. And I’ll post more details on Instagram closer to the date!

That’s all from me.

Love,

Claire