We recently connected with Peter & Grace Assad and have shared our conversation below.

Peter & Grace, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

While neither of us have had a ton of formal training, per se, we’ve both been very involved in honing our craft since childhood.

Peter would spend hours sketching in his drawing pad as a kid, everything ranging from cars to Dragonball Z. At 16, he began teaching himself the piano because he felt a song was inside him itching to make its way out. In college, he set aside art in order to pursue music more, only to pick up a watercolor paintbrush 12 years later when the pandemic hit.

For Grace, it’s been a lot of the same but inverted. It started for her with music–singing solos confidently as a 5-year-old, and growing from there. Then when she entered college and early days of being a mom, music was set aside for a time to focus more on her new career and responsibilities with littles. In recent years, she’s taken up painting, too, and songwriting as well, building on the foundation from her youth.

Louise Miller said (paraphrased), “Whatever strange thing we’ve been into, every failed hobby or forgotten instrument, everything we’ve learned, seems to come back to us to serve us when we need it. However brief it may have been, it’s never wasted.”

There’s a learning curve, to be sure, but it’s such a lifetime of learning. Art has always been with us, and even when we left it, it’s always seemed to find a way back, turning even the everyday stuff of life into rich soil from which to create.

Peter & Grace, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

After a stretch of time wondering what was next, art and music seemed to surface within both of us simultaneously. We both have other careers as well (Grace is a nurse and Peter is a pastor), but art/music/writing is something we both get to do together. Since 2021, we have released two albums (with a third on the way come summer/fall), published a book and have another on the way before the year is out. Peter paints personally and for others who commission specific works from him, and together we just keep creating as we feel led to. Our creative catchall is under the moniker “poems of grace” because it best describes how we see our lives, as poems of grace. We are works of art and artists as work. Everything we do stems out of this sense of identity we have build on the foundation of God’s grace for us. All of it, every ounce of creativity, meant to be a reflection of his creativity in and through us. Not only do we view ourselves as poems of grace, but we believe we ALL are—every single one of us–poems of God’s grace. Our hope is to use every means we have to help others discover their own life as a poem of grace, too.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

As we understand it, there are no creatives vs non-creatives. No, we are ALL creatives! Erwin McManus brilliantly summarizes this when he says, “In the same way bees create hives and ants create colonies, humans create futures.” Creativity isn’t reduced to the moment of inspiration required to write a song or paint a masterpiece. No, creativity looks like taking the chaos around us and ordering it into something sensible (whether it’s reformatting a mass of numbers into a spreadsheet or transforming a mess into a living room once again). All of life necessitates a unique sort of creativity, and who better to do so than human beings, made in the image and likeness of a Creative God?

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

It’s hard to pick one, so here’s two: 1. Watching something develop, from little more than a half-baked idea into a full-fledged product is so incredibly rewarding. It’s almost like childbirth. From concept, to germination, to development, labor, all of it. It can feel so precious and fragile, like a tiny baby that you nurture, care for immensely, and love.
2. Tied with that is observing people’s responses to your work. There is something truly magical about watching a tear fall from someone’s eye because of a lyric you sang, or getting an email because of how something you wrote made sense of their world. It’s so incredibly humbling. Almost like a proud parent, you are floored when this child you’ve raised adds value in the world of others. We’re all trying to figure out this thing called life, and knowing you played a role (however small) in helping someone take that next step is worth it all.

Contact Info:

• Website: poemsofgrace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poems.of.grace/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearepoemsofgrace
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@poemsofgrace