’ I feel important to myself, which is something I haven’t felt since those days when I served in Vietnam.’

There is nothing traditional about Don Brooks’ art studio and gallery. There is no plush carpeting, no demure lighting to bathe his paintings in a soft glow--and no exorbitant prices on the canvases. In his sweat suit spattered liberally with mauve, green and white paint, the 41-year-old Brooks sits in front of his easel in an assigned space at Kobey’s Swap Meet at the Sports Arena. This is his studio and gallery. Self-proclaimed as the “people’s artist,” Brooks paints to order. He can churn out a painting in 20 minutes or less. This summer the San Marcos resident will attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records record as most prolific artist. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Brooks and Vince Compagnone photographed him.

It was really a fluke. I really had no idea why I wanted to paint. I walked by the art store for a solid year before I even ventured in. And I went in one day and walked out with $100 worth of materials, went to my girlfriend’s house that night--when I called and told her what I did she had said she had to see this--and it took me about 12 hours to create a little 9-by-12 canvas. It was the ugliest painting you had ever seen in your life. It took three bottles of wine and 12 candles at midnight to make it look good, and my girlfriend praised it and she wanted it and my ego was bolstered.

It was actually two years after I started painting that I realized something about it. When I was painting I was more at peace with myself than I had ever been, and I figured out that it had actually saved my life.

I had served in Vietnam for 3 1/2 years. I was a paramilitary operative. Mentally, I came back haunted. Like many people, my story’s not unique. There’s hundreds of Vietnam vets out there like that. I am a bona fide delayed-stress victim, and I never knew these things for 15 years after the fact.

I had to fight things like wanting to be a mercenary, wanting to pull the plug on myself . . . and how do I find myself. . . . And when those kinds of thoughts came up in my mind, it bogged me down and I didn’t know what to do. So I’d simply sit at the easel and paint. And then I wouldn’t have to think about it.

I’d paint until 2, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning, because then I wouldn’t have to go to sleep and wake up with it, startled awake. The bottom line is that art was the main thing that kept me together. Because, if it wasn’t in my life--and because there was so much tragedy in the other areas of my life at those times--quite frankly, I would never have made it.

I’m used to distractions in making decisions. I mean, my Lord, I did that for years. There’s nothing more distracting than weapons going off around you and you’re making life-and-death decisions. To sit here and paint in front of the public . . . it’s a quiet surrounding comparatively. It’s very easy for me to do, and I’ve become a little bit of a ham. I like the showmanship.

I’ve become what I call the “people’s artist.” I love the people getting involved in my art. They tell me what colors they want. I get more kicks out of the ladies who come to Kobey’s and bring their pillows from their couches or little swatches of material or wallpaper and say, “Can you do this?” “Can you match that?” And I say, “How fast do you want it?”

If it’s an abstract, I can create it in less than 15 to 20 minutes. If it’s a sky scene, again, I can create it anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. A seascape? Anywhere from 35 to 40 minutes.

I feel important to myself, which is something I haven’t felt since those days when I served in Vietnam.