"Know What You Don't" (fine art print from the "Maxims" series)

"Know What You Don't" (fine art print from the "Maxims" series)ABOUT THIS LISTING This is an unframed archival fine art print on Moab's Natural Rag paper. The print measures roughly 8x10 inches and comes with a printed and signed certificate of authenticity. (Please note that only the first listing photo shows the print. The other photos show the original watercolor painting and embellished gouache mat. The print is derived from a high resolution scan of the painting shown in the listing photos, including the

ABOUT THIS LISTING
This is an unframed archival fine art print on Moab's Natural Rag paper. The print measures roughly 8x10 inches and comes with a printed and signed certificate of authenticity. 

(Please note that only the first listing photo shows the print. The other photos show the original watercolor painting and embellished gouache mat. The print is derived from a high-resolution scan of the painting shown in the listing photos, including the border design on the mat.)

This piece 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
Although this maxim and its counterpart ("Know What You Know") may seem like two competing principles engaged in a tug-of-war, I’ve found that in practice the process of growing in confidence and learning to trust one’s instincts is very often accompanied by an enlarged sense of one’s own ignorance and smallness in the scheme of things. But whether it comes naturally or not, there’s a lot to be said for knowing what you don’t know. 

In this painting, I wanted to illustrate the humble and hungry pursuit of knowledge. My protagonist sits in a dimly-lit library well-stocked with books while scenes from his reading float about the room. These scenes are populated with figures from five of the most impactful non-fiction books I’ve read in the past two years. The jellyfish mat—painted with gouache and black ink—represents untraveled depths, the places we’ve not been yet, the questions we perhaps haven’t even known to ask.

The five books references in the painting's details are as follow:

-Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers (Deborah Heiligman)
-The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women (Kate Moore)
-The Brilliant Abyss (Helen Scales)
-Pandemic 1918 (Catherine Arnold)
-The Seabird’s Cry (Adam Nicholson)

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© 2026 Bryana Joy
The artist retains all copyrights.