The weight of god has settled in our living room,

ushered onto the worn leather couch by a disembodied baritone

chanting sonorously against temptation in ancient Greek.

She says that God forgives her for not visiting His home today.

She could not go, not with all the laundry she has to do for his children.

Instead, she livestreams the biblical heralding of Sunday morning

and makes altars from the piles of folded underwear.

She burns livani in the thimiato to welcome Him.

Our home smells like his home.

My mother is smoking out the house-bound evils in a thick resinous fog,

hopeful that He will take her hospitality as attestation.

My mother says that God bears no grudges and takes no offence.

If the devil is in the details, then god must be in the ambiguity and the indefiniteness,

I suppose he is impossible to anger with what He does not know

I suppose that makes forgiving easy.

My mother has erected temporary shrines for each of my deceased grandfathers.

Their memorial photos look back at me; vacant, disoriented, and just-woken-up

peeking out from behind a veil of dust that has been gathering since their last theological affair.

From his gilded perch of the iconostasis, Saint Xarlambos waves his triumphant

hand in my direction

it is raised over a demon that flails beneath him,

chained at the wrists and ankles,

spitting fire and curses;

a monster that he flogged out of an insane man,

a man that he beat until he saw God.

My mother says that God makes us all in His likeness,

so really, we are all god,

Ecclesiastical Galatea.

We eat of His flesh, and we drink of His blood,

esurient for divinity.

Where does god sit inside me now?

I wonder if my mother sees Him in me.

I have seen god.

I have seen god in the calloused backs of my father’s hands and the ragged edges

of his broken fingernails.

I have seen god bared between the teeth of my brother.

god looked like a leftover piece of spinach.

I want to pry the parts that are god out of me and watch them flail in my hands.

My mother says that God’s love is infinite,

there is always enough to spare for those who believe,

I want to be the gentle lamb,

I want to be the thing that needs guiding, and the thing that is forgiven.

God will take your love dissolved on your tongue,

God will take your love submerged under the water,

God will take your love white-knuckled, bruised skin and bloodied fingernails,

God will take your love with your suffering,

God wants you to suffer so He knows your love is true,

God wants you on your knees,

God wants you to twist your tongue around the words; God wants you to make

them fit,

God wants you to swallow it,

God wants, God wants, God wants.

My mother walks with God through a dark tunnel in perpetual Orphean pilgrimage.

When she turns back to face Him, her eyes catch nothing but receding air.

Launching their artistic career from popular social media platforms, Stanton has exhibited incredible artistic fluidity in a hyper-realistic art style throughout their career. From satirical wordplay visualised, to sentimental yet still surreal pieces, Stanton moves sinuously across mediums and genres; conquering realism and traditional fine art practices, while moving boldly towards surrealism and impressionism, with ink brush pens, gouache and digital art programs.

Beyond being an extremely talented, online-based, queer artist with growing recognition in the community, Stanton feels somewhat on the edge of the art community, having only started to display in galleries and sell their art at events in the past 12 months. Preceding this period of breakthrough into more tangible art communities, Stanton has been managing the debilitating symptoms of an autoimmune disorder; Chronic Lymphocytic Thyroiditis, or Hashimoto’s as it is more colloquially known. This incredibly intimate interview works to complete Stanton’s unfinished self-portrait in the public eye; the struggles of vying for a successful career as an artist while living with chronic illness.

Inconsistency in energy levels; chronic fatigue; physical aches; and, unpredictable fogginess that settles over the mind, have all provided dependable obstacles to Tamasin’s art process. These symptoms have found Tamasin up at all-hours, as she works desperately with the day’s necessary tasks with all the energy they can muster; and, suffering from subsequent illnesses-such as anaemia-which fuel further exhaustion and require further medical treatments.

After finding some time to sit with Tamasin, and understand their position and health situation more deeply, we began the interview by characterising and contextualising their art career.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you made your break on the art scene through TikTok? And this was sort of where you started?

Yeah! I started posting art on TikTok in the form of short jokes or puns in 2019, right at the beginning of TikTok and my HSC exams. Before that I had a pretty good run on Tumblr, posting art for/inspired by emo bands.

The cross-platform transition was not too difficult for Tamasin, who has shown their dynamism and flexibility time and time again as they can adapt to new mediums, platforms and styles with invigoratingly innovative and fresh artistic vision.

Do you have any regrets or doubts about marketing yourself in this form so early on and effectively starting off your career through a social media platform?

It was definitely fun to have such a large audience quite quickly, but it was a little mentally taxing. Luckily my audience, so far, has been comprised of some of the most wonderfully lovely and kind people. Some of whom I’ve even become friends with.

Making the switch from more comedy-based art to art I am proud of was and is still fairly hard. I don’t think I have felt like an ‘actual artist’ until this year because of my change in subject matter.

I found this response immediately intriguing given that in itself, these short-form videos that introduce, advertise, promote, or inspire Stanton’s physical drawings and paintings, can be considered art pieces in-and-of themselves. Although Tamasin found the sentiment flattering they did not agree, believing the commercialised mass popularity of these forms and their easy adaptability would characterise her use of these features as purely tools of advertisement to promote their art or as an instrument to increase brand awareness.

Naturally, my next question is regarding the transition of your fanbase as you moved away from satirical drawings and importantly as you moved into selling or showcasing your art in local galleries.

I think the performance of my videos and online presence as an artist on TikTok definitely went down, but it didn’t bother me too much, since I was proud of what I was creating. I did find it eventuated in more artistic followers, rather than non-artists such as before.

Tamasin and I could both agree the change in demographic from an audience that was predominantly art-consuming to an audience that is predominantly art-producing would be the shift in branding. Social media platforms like TikTok functioned to promote their satirical works that aligned with popular music, viral joke formats or other video trends; creating an audience niche that was both a fan of art and a fan of these TikTok trends.

My final question posited to Tamasin was this; can you talk a bit about the process of creating art and the kind of physical demands it makes on you, especially as a person who has a chronic illness?

Tamasin could not answer for many days after, stating; “It is quite ironic because I don’t have the time or the energy to answer this question yet because of art making and illness”.

Thankfully, after almost a fortnight, Tamasin felt recovered enough to respond over text.

For me, a lot of my art takes a long time. Usually spent sitting down or standing up in the same position for hours. I imagine that it would be draining on anyone, let alone someone like me with a disease that effects my energy levels [edit (to add): and physical strength].

When I do make art, I find that it is the only thing I can do for that day. I won’t usually have the energy for anything else. On a good day I have around 4 hours of work in me before I need to sleep or lay down.

I think it is the staying still, and the mental work that comes with creating art that really affects me the most.

As the interview drew to a close, I had gleaned Tamasin’s unwavering desire to create. I found myself profoundly inspired by the commitment of an individual who is challenged by these symptoms every day, without respite, to not only create art, but create it to the calibre that Tamasin achieves.

My firm believe is that it is the right and the privilege of every artist to make sense of their world, to interpolate it and serve us their insights through incredible work; however, in the case of this interview, I found that Tamasin chooses not to centre her art on her unique experience. This is not because she finds this is an unworthy cause or an unworthwhile story, but because for Tamasin, art is a medium of expression and exploration, rather than dissection.

Through our conversations, I discovered that Tamasin harbours no intention of creating art about their struggle. While their artistic process is weighed by the challenges posed by Hashimoto’s, it will not prevent her from producing breathtaking visual pieces. It is likely that they will continue to venture into uncharted territories, and experiment with new styles and mediums. Tamasin’s journey is one of bold exploration and successful adaption, promising to usher more innovative expressions and renewed artistic perspective in the future.

Tonight,

the blankets stick to me like a second skin,

the crickets,

the cicadas,

and flesh,

meld together as a wall of white noise.

habitual creature,

waiting creature,

patient creature.

My hair is slick against my forehead, tarred and lacquered down.

My chest weighs heaving with the heat of you against it.

My breath escapes me.

Nails,

dig trenches through fresh skin,

before making their bed in the cotton.

Toes,

have curled and unfurled so many times that the bones crack in rhythm.

Teeth,

devouring tissue.

You choke on the taste,

And leave a damp trail behind.

For all the moisture that clings to my skin with its desperate fingers,

its flailing arms,

its ravenous cries,

my mouth is dry and cracked.

No amount of dragging my sandpaper tongue can soothe the splitting flesh.

The Cavern

Empty mouths reap empty guts.

Starved cries echo and reverberate, bubbling to the surface.

You recoil at my hunger,

but, my insides are cavernous.

I want to furnish the space, so that the noise will have something to move through,

so it won’t be so loud,

so it won’t be so large,

so it won’t be so hollow.

You’ve left your sweater on the floor,

half-shoved under my bed.

When you leave,

I pick it off the floor

and wrap myself in this piece of you.

Cedar…

Cinnamon…

Cypress…

Something indeterminably musky.

I take off the knitted fabric and place it neatly at the end of the mattress,

so that when you come back for it,

you know that I treated it well.

The Feast

I devour,

without guilt,

all that you

feed me.

Your name,

fills my mouth whole,

feels awkwardly flush against my tongue,

scrapes against my teeth,

and gets stuck there.

The leftovers dig at my gums,

an A,

an L,

I will be picking out letters for days.

As your hands leave my body and you peel yourself away,

a diaphanous layer of me comes with you,

it is strange to see you wear the hollow skin,

like a snake wearing its shed.

it casts a metallic sheen over you as you dress,

something silvery and slick.

Your jumper seems to have resolved itself to its new home on my bedroom floor.

Smelling only of musk now.

There is a cacophonous melody that knocks against

the walls of my belly, so loud my ears start to ring shrill.

My fingers find a flaw in the knit,

I dig into the flesh of it,

fishing out a throbbing vein,

it pulsates against my hand,

I put it in my mouth and begin to chew.

The Metamorphosis

There is new weight to my flesh,

a moulding stench,

rising from my stomach into my throat,

the bile, the acids, the sharpness of age,

my mouth is coated in a bitter film,

this cavity smells like the damp interior of an old cupboard.

I have been taxidermied to a new fullness,

an intrusion,

a stuffing,

and a burial.

Clumsy hands

run their course over the swollen flesh of my belly,

and insurrect from the vacuous pit,

a flutter

wadded up and pushed so far down the sensation is completely foreign.

Plunge your starving hands,

Becoming a gentle thrashing,

the wings tickle the walls of my stomach,

their flurried pantomime builds such a heat.

I am docile, dissected

and desperate.

Covered in the crawling,

tiny movements that pepper my skin,

the violent scratching,

an insatiable itch.

I surrender,

You dig through flesh

Through bone

Through meat

Through marrow

Through the blood

Through tissue

the intricate mesh of me,

spread out like a crude

cheese cloth.

From the bloody chrysalis,

fuzzy abdomen steadies wavering legs,

as gossamer wings unfurl and spread in graceful salutation.

The wobbly ceiling fan above my bed moves so fast that the blades are all a grey blur. When I was a kid, my younger cousin’s ceiling fan spun so fast that it unscrewed itself from the roof and fell, nearly slicing her up. So, naturally, when I am awake, I keep my eyes on the fan, watching it swing around and around in violent circle after violent circle.

It clicks each time it completes a full loop, in perfect metronomic rhythm. I cannot keep watching the fan, because you have loomed over me in a sudden and glacial canopy. My flesh becomes goose-pimpled and raised; the hairs on my arms, the fullness of my lower belly, the stubble on my legs, the peaks of my hips, all parts of me are lifted in resurrection.

Every ambient light in my room is switched on and buzzing. Glowing against their warmth, you are practically transparent. I can see right through you. It is as if you were made up entirely of honey-coloured light, some golden spectre descended upon me like an angel!

Not even a whisper could fit between us now. I want to melt against you, for your body to become my body, for your skin to become my skin, for your pulse to become my pulse. It is so easy to distract myself with your unearthly beauty as you crush the air out of my lungs, and take in all my breath as your own.

I swear I can hear the lamps humming, in perfect synchronicity. I am worried that they have been left on for too long. I want to reach over and turn them off, but you are open-mouthed and desperate. So, I let them murmur to each other. They speak low and sonorous. I can’t make out what they are saying; I am scared they are talking about me.

You are charting a map of unfamiliar terrain. The lower you get, the more I can see the fan again, so I start to keep time. Inhale, as your lips hover over my chest; hold, as they navigate the curves and bends; exhale, as you raise your eyes to look at me, and flash a wide, toothy smile. Inhale, as you begin to move again, invading new flesh.

I can feel the edge of your teeth at my neck. My body goes still and quiet, and I cannot look at you. Instead, I think of the time I got oral surgery. Stretched out in the long operating chair, making shapes out of the dirt on the ceiling, as the orthodontist approached me with a needle. I have never been able to watch the needle going in; I have always averted my gaze and pretended I didn’t know what was coming. So, naturally, the sharp, piercing sensation was always a shock. My lip involuntarily trembled as he poked the tender and fleshy part of my gum. The orthodontist called me a brave girl. You whisper over and over that I am okay, I am okay, I am okay.

I am laid out biblically over the mattress. The heels of your hands are pressing mine above my head, and your knees keep my legs pinned in place. You have martyred me in my own bed. Your gluttony collects on my chest and at my stomach. It pools in my belly button and slides off of me onto the sheets.

Rolling over, you pat your full stomach and wipe the leftovers dripping from your mouth. I bury myself under layer after layer, sinking into the hot soil of my sheets.

2. Death

From our place on the mattress, you can see through my bedroom windows. Tonight, there is a tapestry of constellations, and in the morning, there will be perfect cotton-puff clouds and the very blue sky, and the early morning sun will make everything warm again.

There is a weight in my stomach that keeps me tied to the mattress; the bed will have an impression of me when I rise: my feet pressed tightly together, arms folded over each other as I squeeze myself closed. I am scared of disturbing you by moving. Your cold touch has turned my body stiff; when I move, every bone creaks and clicks into place, so I stay painfully still.

When I close my eyes, all I can picture is you, red-flushed and golden against the blank canvas of my sheets. I think I must have dreamed you up; you are a perfect vision; my sweet boy, honey-dipped, spiced and saccharine.

You roll over, and a bright light illuminates the back of your head and casts a harsh white halo; my angel, my angel. I wonder if you have fallen asleep.

I do not think I can sleep. I do not feel like I can ever sleep again. The same frantic thoughts turn over and over again in my mind, in perfect tempo with the click…click…click… will you love me now? - click - could you still love me now? - click - please, please love me now - click. I promise to be good. I promise to be glad. I promise to be grateful.

My teeth ache; I have been grinding them down to a stub. When I wipe my tongue over them, I half expect to feel red, raw gum instead. Finally, I move, peeling myself off the sheets to reach for my nearby water bottle, an internal baptism.

There is no stain on the sheets; you took it all from me. You have drawn out everything bloody, full-bodied and beating.

3. Turning

There is a book that I keep on the nightstand. It is about a woman who feels like a voyeuristic intruder in the interiors of her own desire. No matter how ardently she tries, she is too illusory and fragmented to be wholly true or devotedly earnest. I had pencilled, I think I was made to love, on the first page margin. A wishful admission fading out into the page.

The room looks different now that you have been inside it, smaller somehow, hollowed-out and cavernous, and smells like rotting wood. When you leave, I think I will need to fill the space; I have found that I starve better in company. This place is a trap; in here, love is lured, ensnared, and digested.

A part of you stays behind, circling and roaming; the phantom moans used to scare me, but they sound a bit like music now. I had been so desperate for you to stay, erecting altars of abrasive iconography in your reverence; paintings on the wall, photos on the mirror. Did you feel flattered to see yourself, so warm and alive?

My body is repenting you. On some cosmic level, it has recognised you as a great spiritual evil, an insidious intrusion, and has taken to discharging you in thick white clumps.

In this tomb, the same thoughts oscillate continuously in my mind. I think I was made for love to move through. I think I was made to hold love in my hands and watch it slip through the seams of my fingers. I think I was made to host love, to let love kick up its feet and rest from a long journey.

You will never know what it is to be restless, starved and helpless. There is always someone to keep you fed, and full, and happy; someone else to bleed.

Cut through my living room, like a flash from an old movie.

Two dapper young gentlemen, donning handsome suits.

Where are they slinking off to, all dressed up?

An important business meeting?

A fine dining establishment?

A fancy wedding or a funeral?

They have forgotten their briefcases! Their wallets! Their neckties and cufflinks!

Two deadly assassins dressed in long black cloaks

stalk and prey on all manner of small insects in the dark:

crickets, cockroaches, beetles - beware!

Every household pest runs in fear as the ground shakes beneath their giant paws.

Two little princes, stretched out languidly against cushioned seats, basking in the sun.

Their eyes flutter open lazily, their delicate jaws stretch wide,

as they roll onto their long backs, demanding affection.

Two sly little shadows blending into the dark corners of my wardrobe

They have pushed out all of my clothes to fit their gentle little bodies inside the shelf,

I do not know they have crawled in there until they emerge noisely,

shoving doors and scattered items,

and I startle awake.

Two horror movie villains,

yellow eyes cast over their hunched shoulders,

flashing sharp teeth and their coats of bad omens.

Two darling little babes with golden eyes like dinner plates, staring up at me from an inky blank face,

eyes that follow me wherever I move.

I hold and rock them,

and I remember that they are tiny living breathing things;

they have a tiny little stomach full of fish and meat and kibble,

tiny little lungs to breathe, hidden behind a pair of tiny little ribs,

they have a tiny little heart pumping blood to their tiny little brains,

and this small, beautiful thing in my arms,

thinking himself a large and graceful predator,

is nothing but a small child.