The diptych titled The Academy of Forbidden Thoughts stages an improbable yet striking juxtaposition between a quotation from Philip Guston and image of a Tarot card. As the artist writes, “Big synchronicity: the first line of the lower Trigram given by chance was our Tarot book (which I never look at) showing the Six of Wands. Among the lines also was Philip Guston’s collected writings in which he discusses his painting Riding Around. Had I not landed on Guston, of all pages of all books, this painting would not have happened.” At once projecting humour and mystery, triumph and suppression, cultural divisions and thematic coherence, the painting assembles a multitude of visual layers to speak powerfully to the present moment.