‘Santa Lucia/Sister Lithium’ refers to Santa Lucia or St. Lucy whose name comes from the Latin meaning light. A female martyr, she is celebrated on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, marking longer hours of light. Lithium is a mood stabiliser, used as a therapy for mental illness and to calm emotional states, which dates back to at least Roman times, when people soaked in alkali-rich mineral springs to soothe both ‘‘melancholia’’ and ‘‘mania.’ Here in a vivid layering of paint, eyes emerge as well as a female figure.

Psychologically charged works are informed by research but remain instinctive and personal - Stein paints to plunder her emotional experience. Highlighting dualities and paradoxes of the mind and body, she ultimately reveals the human being as subject to numerous forces playing out at once.