I'm Never Gonna Know You Now (Randy's Rope)
I'm Never Gonna Know You Now (Randy's Rope)
Bethany Carlson Coffin
I'm Never Gonna Know You Now (Randy's Rope)
30” x 30”
ink on panel
2023
Rendered with quiet intensity, I'm Never Gonna Know You Now (Randy's Rope) captures a loosely knotted rope in meticulous ink on panel. The rope—worn, slightly frayed, yet still holding—serves as both metaphor and memorial. Within its soft tension lies the fragility and resilience of human connection: bonds that stretch, change, and sometimes slip through our grasp. The circular format reinforces the sense of a closed loop, a cyclical return to memory, absence, and the longing to understand someone no longer here.
Part of Carlson’s ongoing exploration of relationship, grief, and collective identity, this piece reflects on the counterfactuals that haunt loss—what could have been, what will never be known. Yet embedded in the gesture of the knot is also care and intention, a symbol of chosen connection, of trying. Through this simple yet emotionally charged image, Carlson invites viewers into a space of truth-telling, vulnerability, and the quiet strength of being bound to others.