Bionic in buff

An interview with artist Edward Bionic

Edward photographs friend on the Sunshine Coast

When I first started getting into the naturist Twitter community during pandemic times, before Elon Musk took over and everything went downhill, Edward Bionic was one of a handful of people there whom I had the pleasure of interacting with and getting to know. Edward is a writer and artist who frequents Wreck Beach in Vancouver, where he often paints. I even painted him once myself! Then, well, Elon took over and everything went downhill. It took me until this year to delete my own account, but Edward deleted his account soon after the takeover began, and we fell out of touch until just recently when I found him again on Instagram. He’s been hard at work making new art, digital drawings based on vintage naturist photos, focused primarily on families and children.

Edward has also started keeping a blog this year called the Nudist Diaries, where he shares his lovely naturist art along with a variety of thoughts on the subject, as well as musings on his daily life, the internet, and the ways things change. I do recommend you take a look at it after reading this interview I had with him about his work! 🚀

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How did you get into art? What got you into naturism? When did you start to combine the two?

Asking how I got into art is a bit like asking how I came to be. It was always part of me. From as early as pre-kindergarten, my mom started collecting the little things I did, and I was always super interested in creating from a very early age. Throughout school my notebooks and texts were covered in doodlings and drawings, and by high school, all my electives were art related. I even attempted to do Fine Arts in College, but the rigidity of the foundation year put me off. I was far too much of a free spirit and determined to do my own thing, and being forced to learn things I had no interest in didn’t appeal to me in the least. However, I had no real focus and most of my art until I discovered nudism was cartoony and doodles. I did experiment with doing commissioned portraiture for a while, as I was very good with faces at the time, but I found it to be a chore more than a joy, so I gave that up as well.

As to what got me into naturism? Well, it was a combination of things. I was sexually abused as a child, and while I wasn’t raised to be bodily oppressed in general, that experience and trauma did cause me to become extremely ashamed of myself and my bodily functions. I became hyper bladder shy, hid in stalls to change when in change rooms, etc. So when the internet age came around and I stumbled on a newsgroup for naturists, it was like a light bulb went off. This idea that people could parade around without fear or shame was astounding to me... and I somehow instinctively knew that this would be the thing to help me and my trauma. Out of all the therapy in the world, it was nudism that brought me out of that black hole the most.

As to when I started combining the two? I suppose it started when I was doing a comic strip called "Bratstreet" in the early 2000s. I have some examples of it on my Instagram account. In that comic, I had a main child character that I used as an allegory of my own nudist awakening. The character would frequently shed her diaper for innocent naked frolics, as toddlers are wont to do, but it was also my beginning into choosing a future of nude art. The rest, as they say, is history.

One thing I love is your paintings on rock and driftwood made at the beach as a form of public art. I was heartbroken to read you ended up getting rid of them earlier this year. Prior to having to tear them down, do you know what the response was to that work? Do you have future plans for some kind of public naturist art?

I never really found out if there was any large response to the beach art. I know that I had a couple of encounters with people that commented positively on them, and one group that took photos, but other than that, I never heard or saw anything about it. Unfortunately, I had simply chosen the wrong location for it, having started it in an area close to a Youth Summer Camp, so I finally decided it had to go in the interest of keeping the peace.

I have many, many ideas and plans for public naturist art, but I have yet to find suitable locations. This is more a fault of my own of course, as I’d rather my limited free time be spent more on just enjoying the sun, or doing the digital drawings I’m doing now, than hunting down art locations. However, once the weather gets a little cooler and it becomes a little more tolerable to hike around the wilderness here, we’ll see. 

I also really enjoyed your self portraits showing how your body has changed over the years. I think it’s a great way to develop and showcase body acceptance outside of the margins we’re often forced into. Is that an important part of naturism for you?

Body acceptance is massively important to me. Not only in the sense of escaping society’s grip on our ideas of what is acceptable or not, but in understanding ourselves and our limits and feelings about what our body is capable of and keeping close tabs on what it is telling us. My self-portraits were intended not only to show that body changes are ok, but that it’s also OK to *not* accept if those changes are making you feel negative or limiting your ability to do the things you want to do. That doesn’t mean that you need to feel negative about the way you look, only that it’s OK to want to do something about it in order to help you. In my case, my body changes started limiting my mobility and ability to do physical activities. I decided I wanted to have more mobility and be more physical, so I did the run of self-portraits for myself to give myself incentive. It worked. I have shed 15 pounds this summer, and hope to continue on the path to more wellness. Yet I still have and had no shame in what my body is or was in all that time. It didn’t stop me from continuing to undress and I still enjoyed my naked time throughout, and that’s what naturism can do. It can help you still recognize that no matter what you look like, it’s ok. You look great and wonderful and beautiful. Yet you can also choose for yourself, if you wish to look or feel different as well.

Your recent work has been all simple, strong linework with a focus on composition, quite different from your beach paintings. What led to this style?

I’m not a painter. I never have been. When I paint, I’m learning from scratch and I tend to do it in a style that is a little more abstract and chaotic, in order for me to get the basics down before I start to learn more detailed structure. Drawing, however, I’ve been doing since toddlerhood, so I have a lot more experience and skill with it. That said, the current style I’m doing has more to do with an interest in keeping my subject matter anonymous than it does in wanting any specific style. Even with the linework I haven’t been extremely consistent. I’ve experimented with sharp lines, flowing lines, and a combination. I find that when I draw with ink and paper, I fall into a completely different style than when I draw digitally. This probably has to do with the way each medium flows in terms of how it’s set up and how I hold the instruments.

I’m intensely focused on family naturism. Life didn’t give me a family of my own, but I was in childcare for close to 20 years. I discovered through that time, and through my own experience with naturism itself, just how much letting go of society’s oppression of the body could be beneficial to children AND parents. In fact, in recent years, my own experiences have shown me not only the benefits, but in my mind, the necessity of it. So my line art is done in a way where I can draw children and families without having to worry about identity being compromised or dealing with kick-back from closed-minded people due to realistic representation of bodies. Not that it’s a full shield from it, but it helps a lot. It’s worked so well that even Instagram, one of the most draconic image-sharing apps out there, hasn’t suspended or banned me yet. It’s also just a very comfortable and sleek style. Something about it just makes me happy and content, and I can complete a piece very quickly, which is important with how limited my time for art can be.

What are your future plans as an artist? Any particular goals you’re aiming for?

I would like to have a show somewhere, focusing on Naturism and how beneficial it can be for society, but I need to figure out a way to get more drawings in with a specific theme. For now, I’m just kind of honing my skill, but I do have ideas, albeit a bit broken and disjointed. I’m more of a stream-of-consciousness kind of person, as my blog can attest to, so getting a themed art exhibition going sort of breaks my brain. Yet I think it would be wonderful to do, so I definitely have plans swimming around for that.

One goal I have that seems next to impossible for me is to be a sort of official or unofficial artist for a Naturist Resort or community. I would love to have a large and rotating group of families and individuals that I could use as models and inspiration for my line art. As it is right now, I have to either scour the internet (which is increasingly closed off to naturism) or rely on myself and friends to provide references. I prefer to work from reference, as I just find it more accurate and enjoyable. Trying to create bodies out of nothing is just frustrating and off-putting for me, and besides, seeing real people enjoying real activities in their real bodies is just wonderful. 🪐