About
Hi, I'm Damian — a creative who builds.
I paint and teach in Cornwall. I've also spent a working life starting and running businesses. Now I build the tools that let me do the creative work I actually want. Creative Path 52 is those tools, packaged for you.
Where I stand
The maker stuck between the day job and the calling
For years I've taught watercolour, oils and acrylics at the Cornish Craft Barn near Truro: small rooms, wet paint, people who arrive sure they can't draw and leave with something they're proud of. That part I know how to do.
Maybe you know this one. You can make the thing. You're good at it, or you're getting there. What you can't seem to make room for is the life around it: the job that pays the bills, the hours that vanish, the idea you wrote down once and filed away while everything else got loud. You're stuck between a day you tolerate and a calling you can't quite reach. I know that gap well. I spent a long time on the wrong side of it.
What changed it
It wasn't more talent. It was leverage.
For most of my working life the building itself was the job, satisfying in its way, but never quite the thing that was mine. What gave me the most pride was the painting: a hobby, a skill set built over years of workshops and classes, that quietly outgrew everything else. Three years ago I decided to make it the centre, not the edge.
I'd read Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks (the plain arithmetic of a short life) and I stopped waiting. What finally moved it was leverage, not more talent or more discipline. I started building tools, with AI as the engine, that took the running-of-it off my shoulders: the scheduling, the chasing, the content, the admin that never ends. The moment that weight lifted, I had the hours to make the work again.
Why I can guide this
Before the studio, I built 12 businesses.
I've started, run, employed people into, and sold 12 distinct businesses across as many sectors: sport, web hosting, software, IT, consulting, fashion, hospitality, property and multi-venue retail. I'm a builder who chose the creative life, not an art teacher who happened on some tools, and I made the system to help you make the same pivot in a fraction of the time it took me.
Sport
Tennis Coach & Stringer
Coached and strung racquets through university; sold to clubs and sports stores.
Web hosting
Webhoster
An early web-hosting business, keeping other people's sites online.
EdTech
Monstervision — Educational Server & Software Solutions
Acquired by a global franchiseEducational servers and software: a pre-Moodle-era learning platform for schools.
IT services
Monstervision — IT Network Support & Installations
Server solutions and network install and maintenance for schools and businesses.
Bespoke software
3 GoWest
Bespoke software development solutions, built with my own dev team.
The standout · software built & acquired
A global franchise acquired Monstervision
I built the software from the ground up with my own dev team. A global business franchise bought the company to secure it, and kept me on to train their international partners worldwide.
Consulting
Consulting
Independent Lean Six Sigma, MCP and PRINCE2 consultant and contractor.
Fashion & product
Kernoda
My own clothing line: Cornish-born, Cornish-designed; layered clothing and equipment built for the Cornish climate.
Hospitality
Akaroa Bistro
A bistro in Cornwall, run to five-star TripAdvisor reviews.
Property & holiday lets
Hygge Holidays Cornwall
Self-owned property management and holiday letting, including AirBNB.
Multi-venue retail
Cornish Craft Barn
A multi-business venue: training centre, cafe, retail shop (physical and online), room hire and gallery.
Art education
DSA — Damian Semonin Art
My art teaching and practice: 708 workshop attendances by 330 students.
Software & AI
Creative Path 52
The current build: the toolkit, the method and InkFox.
Then I chose the creative life, and built Creative Path 52 so you don't have to spend thirty years learning it the hard way.
The rare part
How rare that path really is, one step at a time
Most people never start a single business. Each step below is rarer than the one before it. The figures describe the wider population: the backdrop that makes the record above worth trusting.
Stack the odds and you’re into a vanishingly small few. This is an illustration of how they compound, not a single measured statistic.
And roughly six in ten UK businesses don’t survive their first five years (ONS Business Demography, UK: 2024).
Real, not stock
Guest artists at the Barn
Real working artists come to teach and sketch at the Barn. No stock photos here, just a place artists actually turn up to.
What it can make you
Creative Path 52 is that leverage, packaged for you rather than for me.
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Art-Capable
The craft itself: skills, lesson plans, a daily practice.
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Business-Capable
The part nobody teaches: filling seats, winning venues at fair rents, pricing right, marketing yourself without a marketing team.
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Time-Rich
The tools, a CoPilot among them, that hand the hours back where they belong: into the work.
How I know it works
It's earning its keep in a real business — mine.
I'm not writing this from the far side of success. I still teach, week in and week out, and I run the whole of Creative Path 52 on the tools you'll find here: the website, the bookings, the courses, the working day itself. When something here says it's working, it means it's earning its keep in a real business, mine, right now. Not that it passed a demo.
When I'm not in the studio you'll find me out on the bike with a sketchbook, drawing Cornwall on location.
If this sounds like where you are
Start small, or just say hello.
Begin with the free papers, or drop me a line. No pitch here. The selling can wait for a page that's actually about the products.
