ABOUT THIS LISTING This listing is for an original intricate surreal watercolor illustration on hot-pressed Arches watercolor paper. The painting is accompanied by a bespoke embellished mat painted with gouache and affixed to the painting using archival conservation methods. Including the mat, the piece measures 12x16 inches. "Know What You Know" is one of ten intricate watercolor paintings Bryana created in 2025 for a series of illustrated proverbs called "Maxims." This series was created as part of the Tales From The Mandalina Tree, and exists thanks to the support of Bryana's subscribers over on Patreon.
ABOUT THIS PAINTING This maxim is an old theme for me, but explored here in a new and a more direct way with an illustration that amalgamates various components of my own yearslong process of disentanglement from high-control religion, and my efforts to track down and abide in that elusive happy spot I call integrity.
Oh, integrity. How beautiful, how entirely sublime it is to live at peace with oneself and not to be always troubled inside by a conflict between what you believe to be true in the deep place of your heart and what you feel obliged to believe but can’t quite manage to.
In this painting, my protagonist sits with her face turned cheerfully but resolutely away from the barren desert and disapproving representatives of an old paradigm. She is facing the ocean and making herself a home for peace, the darling bird. She holds on her knee a pot of rosemary—for remembrance, if you remember your Hamlet. (“they ask me to remember/but they want me to remember/their memories/and i keep on remembering/mine,” wrote Lucille Clifton in her poem “why some people be mad at me sometimes.” And well.)
She’s not responsive to the calls of coinage, the way money begs us to put it in the middle of things, the way money is spent in great quantities to get us to be of a certain mind. She’s not troubled by the disapproving glares of that unholy pair: the sword and the sacred book. SHIPPING INFORMATION Ships for free within the United States. International shipping options are available at checkout.
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