by Bonnie Wells

Donna Estabrooks is the James Brown of fine art. Last year the Northampton artist mounted 36 exhibitions of her paintings around the valley. Just now she has six shows of her large, vibrant acrylics hanging from Greenfield to Easthampton. So the question becomes, "How does she do it?"

Estabrooks admits that she fights incipient workaholism, forcing herself to occasionally pick blueberries or float around on a raft at her home on an organic farm in Cummington. But she has other secrets as well, and she's willing to give them away. In a new class entitled "Your Life is Your Work of Art," she will share her techniques for cultivating creativity and "blasting through creative blocks."

Classes will be offered Tuesday evenings from 7 to 9, Oct. 25 through Dec. 13. at her studio in Florence. She will also hold a Wednesday morning class, 9:30 to 11:30, starting Oct. 26. The fee for
the eight-week course is $80.

Estabrooks contends that the biggest obstacle to free-flowing creativity is the set of negative voices ignited by a blank canvas. You know the ones Ñ "I don't have any ideas. .That looks like a stupid color to be going with that color...Who do you think you are, anyway, trying to paint?"

The idea, she says, is to keep the hand moving so that the brain can't get involved "My greatest friend is a timer," she says.

In one of her favorite exercises, Estabrooks gives participants a blank sheet with 60 boxes on it. She plays a tape on which a timer sounds every minute. At the sound of the tone, the artists move on to their next box.

"Some people have a breakthrough after five boxes," she says, "some after 20."Some tear their hair and run out. But, "In one hour, you have 60 ideas," she says "From those 60, I show them how to work."

Shella Dietz, who travels from her home In Miami to spend summers in West Cummington, became a student of Estabrooks after seeing an exhibit of her work at Bart's in Northampton two years ago.

"I had been looking for a teacher for some time," she says "When I saw her work. Filled with so much color, excitement and energy, I knew she was the one I wanted to take lessons from."

Dietz says she didn't even know if Estabrooks accepted students but she called her up anyway, and was delighted to discover Estabrooks had taught for nine years as an artist-in-residence at UMass and was willing to take her on.

"The whole experience has been an enormous amount of fun," she says. "The beauty of her teaching is that she teaches without teaching. It just happens. Her enthusiasm and energy is very contagious."