Unlovable

• Price: $80
• Acrylic on canvas board.
• 8x10in.
• 2021

At first glance, Unlovable appears almost childlike: a small, handmade doll with pigtails, bright blue button eyes, and an innocent expression. But beneath that fragile exterior is the story of someone shaped by neglect, rejection, and abuse.

The doll’s enormous eyes have been blackened around the edges, suggesting the lasting effects of what it has endured. They are still wide open, still searching, but no longer untouched. What once represented innocence has been altered by years of experiences it was never meant to carry.

Its body is covered in stitches, each one marking another place where something has torn and been pieced back together. The repairs don’t restore what was lost. Instead, they become part of the figure itself—a permanent record of everything it has survived.

Surrounding the doll is a dense, almost suffocating forest. Its vivid green foliage creates an unexpected contrast with the figure’s pale, lifeless form. There is life everywhere, yet the doll appears completely isolated within it, emphasizing the particular cruelty of feeling alone while surrounded by a world that continues moving around you.

But the most important element may be the title.

Unlovable represents the belief that can take root when rejection happens often enough: that being mistreated must mean there is something inherently wrong with you. That if people leave, hurt, or neglect you, the problem must somehow be who you are.

The doll is not inherently unlovable.

It is what happens when someone is made to believe that they are.

Behind the button eyes, beneath the stitches, there is still something innocent. Something that wanted to be held, protected, and accepted without having to earn it.

Unlovable is ultimately about the damage caused when a person is denied those things—and the devastating lie they may eventually come to believe about themselves.