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 — and 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 wasn't more talent or more discipline. It was leverage. 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 not an art teacher who happened on some tools. I'm a builder who chose the creative life — and 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. This isn’t a stock-photo operation — it’s a place artists actually turn up to.
What it can make you
Creative Path 52 is that leverage, packaged for you — not 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 — the selling can wait for a page that's actually about the products.
