Peyton Sawyer allowed me to become an artist

All I needed was a medium to express my teenage angst

Disclaimer: I may share some spoilers here and there of One Tree Hill in general, so if you’re planning to watch, I don’t recommend reading through.

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When I think about how I became the artist I am today, my memory brings me back to One Tree Hill.

My fondest memory of watching One Tree Hill was during the summer. I would drop by my neighbor’s house for an entire afternoon and we’d catch an episode or two at etc channel (mostly reruns). I don’t remember much from that time, but they might have downloaded some from Limewire¹ as well. (Limewire!!!)

For context, One Tree Hill² was a drama television series that premiered in 2003, centered around the life of half-brothers Lucas and Nathan Scott set in Tree Hill, a fictional town in North Carolina.

Here’s the opening sequence:

The series ran a total of nine seasons, but I only remember finishing up to the sixth. The show’s genre is a mix of drama, coming-of-age, sports (basketball), and of course, romance. Since it’s a coming-of-age series, and I was in my early teens when I watched the show for the first time, OTH influenced a lot of my own growing up years and carving my path to self-discovery.

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One of the characters, Peyton Sawyer, is a cheerleader, but is also into music and visual art. She had a rep of being the mysterious girl—secretive and deep.

When I first watched One Tree Hill, I identified myself so much with Peyton’s character, with similar interests in both art and music. I remember thinking how amazing it was to see a resemblance and find that connection with a fictional character on television.

In The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (S1, E2), this conversation she had with Lucas (the main character and eventually, her love interest) that flipped a switch in me:

Peyton: [to Lucas]  I want to draw something that means something to someone. You know, I want to draw blind faith, or a fading summer, or just a moment of clarity. It's like when you go and see a really great band, live for the first time and, you know, and nobody's saying it, but everybody's thinking it, we have something to believe in again. I want to draw that feeling, but I can't. And if I can't be great at it then I don't want to ruin it. It's too important to me.

I want to draw something that means something to someone.

In that moment, I knew—I wanted to make art, and make it mean something. And give it a life of its own as it makes its way out into the world.

One of Peyton’s art from One Tree Hill. The sketchy style and dominantly black color choice (with pops of red) drew me in.

Peyton’s art was dark, deep, and mostly drawn in black and white. It also influenced my own art while I was exploring different mediums and ways to express myself visually.

Hear You Me, 2008, ink on paper

For a time, I used to have a DeviantART³ account (from 2008-2011). I was heavily influenced by psychedelic art and it was a dominant style in my work at that time (also, let’s be honest, my allowance could only afford fineliner pens lol).

This was entitled Riot, inspired by Paramore’s album at that time.

This was an experiment summarizing I think some moments in my sophomore year in high school? I honestly forgot!

I was in my teens at that time, and I didn’t know what the word psychedelic meant yet (oops!)—I just knew I loved drawing these patterns and getting lost in them.

I think, for a moment, I reminded myself that instead of following the art styles that I wasn’t skilled at (I still suck at drawing faces and people, mind you), I found a technique that further enabled me to venture into abstract and make sense of lines, shapes, and patterns.

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Aside from art, music played an important part of the show.

Peyton listened to a lot of music, as well as would host events like Open Mic Night or concerts at Karen’s Cafe or TRIC, and it was how I was introduced to the music that would change my life forever.

Ok can we look at that Fall Out Boy poster? Omg

Because of One Tree Hill, I still listen to Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, Jack’s Mannequin, and Dashboard Confessional, to name a few.

I remember they invited Fall Out Boy to perform, and that’s when I discovered the song “Dance, Dance” and my taste in music was never the same. Eighteen years later, on my commutes, I still listen to Fall Out Boy classics and zone out to From Under the Cork Tree, their first big album.

After my rewatch in 2016, I finally put together a playlist⁴ that I listen to every single time I am on the way home from the airport. It suddenly became a habit I practiced last year.

Music definitely played a huge part of One Tree Hill, as there were albums produced from the show. One of the characters, Haley James-Scott, also sings in the show—and has a storyline related to her singing career. Peyton eventually became a music producer and it was bound to happen, with her taste in music.

Songs that I would hear for the first time at the closing theme, like Return to Me, would make me feel all the feelings as the scene closes and transitions to credits. Or a specific moment where they play a specific song and that moment just makes sense to me, as a viewer (I want to know how they do this—how do the showrunners make you feel things?).

Looking back, it was one of the first times I felt so connected to music (with an iPod mini⁵ in my hand—specifically in the color green). Maybe it’s musical awakening?

Many years later, it feels familiar and comfortable to me, like a warm, cozy blanket. I guess in some way, it’s why I feel nostalgic for One Tree Hill. It established so much of my creative journey, and the influences of my coming of age years and the years that followed.

I’m leaving you with one of my all-time favorite songs from the show:

To make a mountain of your life
Is just a choice
But I never learned enough
To listen to the voice that told me
Always love, Hate will get you every time
Always love, Don't wait til the finish line

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This took me a week long to write lol. Writing is hard! Showing up is even more difficult. But I hope you enjoyed it. And if you watched One Tree Hill—tell me, what was your favorite memory of watching the show?

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Looking for more OTH nostalgia? Check out Drama Queens if you want to relive some episodes and hear from Peyton, Brooke, and Haley talk about OTH.

1. LimeWire (launched in May 2000) was a free peer-to-peer file sharing client for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Solaris. Created by Mark Gorton in 2000, it was most prominently a tool used for the download and distribution of pirated materials, particularly pirated music. (Source: Wikipedia)

2. For context, here’s the page about One Tree Hill on Wikipedia.

3. Before Instagram, most of the artists I follow shared their work on DeviantART (https://www.deviantart.com). This was before the 2010s and followers were called “watchers”.

4. My One Tree Hill playlist.

5. My first iPod looked like this: