In the pink: Fuschia Nightfire

She says it's because she gets bored easily, but the truth is, it's because she's good. Fuschia Nightfire turns her hand to machinima and is witty, to installation art and is eloquent, to painting and is brilliant.

virtual paradox? Nina Camplin and Fuschia Nightfire

Nina Camplin became Fuschia Nightfire to 'find a new husband' - that's the story she tells: tired of being a WoW widow, she saw a news report about people finding new love in Second Life, and let RL hubby know she was going to see about getting a new man, virtually. The whole thing was a joke, and she thought she'd get bored and stop coming in after a while. None of that never happened. Four years on, Nina and her husband are still happily together, on separate computers but at the same big desk, and in the meantime Fuschia (that was the colour of her hair at the time) has developed an inworld portfolio to rival the one she has in the real world. Recently she's made a avatar for her 'real self' in a bid to avoid confusion, as she brings her SL and RL audiences together at a number of venues, like Vision of Beauty Art Complex.

Fuschia Nightfire: These are some RL paintings taken from SL scenes.I made a NinaCamplin Resident avatar for showing my RL painting. It's strange, but I could never quite get used to showing my RL paintings under a different name. I gave a talk a while back to a RL art group and they found the pseudonym thing very confusing, so I made a decision to show all my SL art under 'Fuschia Nightfire'. Fuschia is my 'trademark avatar'; I'm doing a photo project, logging my changing avatar for a year. I'll show the rest of my art with my real name.

At Lana Simondson's LA Gallery of Fine Arts, Fuschia spoke about her influences, and about her early days in Second Life. It was a while before she came across art communities - in part because she wasn't looking for them; when she did, there seemed to be lots of empty and uninspiring galleries. The community has come a long way since those days, and she loves the opportunities for collaboration and meeting with both the public and other artists. The feeling is mutual.
Lana Simondsen: Her work is stunning, graceful and full of life and her heart. Her approach is totally from her sense of fun and creativity.
That's more than evident in her contribution to the Pop Art show at Vista Hermosa Art Center shown here.
Nina/Fuschia has been painting all her life, and at home in the South of England she is a professional artist specializing in murals and animal portraits. The joy of Second Life is that, with a simple TP, you can see many of her murals just as they're meant to be viewed - full size, up close and personal to your avatar.

Fuschia Nightfire: This was done at the end of a lady's back garden; her husband was an artist, and this has lots of elements taken from his paintings.

Can't get enough of these cows!
I wondered what it means to an artist to be able to accomplish pieces in such different styles, 'to order'.

Fuschia Nightfire: It's very strange how that happened. My work was getting very expressionist, and I decided to go back to university to do a Fine Art degree when I was 40 - my mid life crisis! When I came out of that degree, I had gotten really into making photo realistic work which I guess had a lot to do with my trompe l'oeil murals.

Fuschia's trompe-l'oeil murals show the breadth of her ability to manipulate lighting and perspective in 2D art, and it's easy to see how her illusionistic bent would lead her to making 3D installations and dioramas. The technical aspects of building in Second Life didn't come easily. When she first started showing her work it took ages just to learn how to upload paintings and get them onto prims. Now she makes it all - even wearable art!

Fuschia Nightfire: In the real world, I have done a bit of sculpture; I learnt how to weld and did some metal sculptures a few years ago. In SL, I never thought I would have advanced in my building skills as much as I have. My next thing is mesh, I am dying to get started on that! I could never really get on with making sculpties. I can make all sorts of different blobs, but nothing more advanced than that. I often use full perm sculpties, since sometimes it's better to make use of ready made stuff, it's quicker than starting from scratch. When I first came on, the first artist who really amazed me was Feathers Boa with her avatar reactive pieces - I loved her work. Scripting is something I can never get my head around, so I sometimes commission scripts, but mostly I just pick up freebie ones and fiddle about with them.

The 'fiddling' works. Scripted landscapes (pictured here at a well-curated show on Artina) display her flair for both design and variety. Some cycle through night and day, while others, like the one in the foreground, featuring flowers by Fuschia's close and much-missed friend Sabrinaa Nightfire, bathe the viewer in a luminous, almost perfumed cloud of petals.
What's up next? For Nina in Real Life, it's more murals, and more time dedicated to getting her work out there. She confesses that a RL artist has to do way more legwork to get known and to get commissions - SL makes it all very easy by putting such things at the tips of our fingers. It's time to get down to some serious business! And for Fuschia, in SL? At the end of January she takes over at Metales, spreading her wings in a sim-wide build.


Fuschia Nightfire: MetaLES owners Romy and Ux invited me after seeing my zebras at UWA, so i wanted to do something around that. I decided to go with the theme from the title of the piece : 'Not everything is plain black and white'.
You can expect a build in many shades of grey, but ultimately, it will be Fuschia all over.