Meet the EFL star who has auctioned his artwork for thousands of pounds and has a tattoo of Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear!

Even in what seems to be the golden age of Premier League ink there cannot be many footballers who have decorated their bodies with a tattoo of Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear.

Then again, Michael Frey is no ordinary footballer. The Queens Park Rangers forward is also a dedicated artist and as he gives Daily Mail Sport an insight into his work he talks of influences ranging from Stan Bowles to Pablo Picasso before pulling up his shirt to reveal his own small tribute to Van Gogh, mid flank on his right side.

It is a reproduction of a sketch made by Felix Rey, the doctor who treated Van Gogh after his mental breakdown and self-mutilation in 1888, two years before the Dutch painter took his own life.

‘I love Van Gogh because he gave everything for art,’ says Frey, 31. ‘Nothing came back to him in his life, but he gave so much. When you are in front of his paintings you can feel he was a little bit lonely. That’s my feeling. A great artist and a great inspiration for so many people.’

Frey’s first steps in art were in his native Switzerland with his grandfather.

‘He was a talented artist who liked to paint with watercolours,’ he says. ‘My first paintings were made with him at the table at home when I was four or five years old. I found I liked it and did not stop.

Queens Park Rangers forward Michael Frey is also a dedicated artist as he told Daily Mail Sport

He has a tattoo of Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear on his body. His artwork on show (right)

‘In the school when the teacher was talking, I was drawing. I would come home and eat and when my parents were watching TV I was drawing. Always drawing. I became quite good, and I enjoy it.’

Frey attended art school, which he found combined neatly with afternoon training sessions but once his football career turned professional at Young Boys, his art became at first a hobby and then a therapeutic release from the pressures of the intensity of the job.

‘Pressure is part of football,’ he says. ‘Nothing bad, it’s a good pressure. But you must score. You must fight for your place. Art is a good way to stay calm. Like a form of meditation.

‘When you have the blank canvas in front of you, you have to find something from within yourself, you have to paint something. It can come from inside or you can sit and study what you see around you.

‘If you sit for an hour in front of a tree and try to understand the details of the tree you will calm down for sure. I cannot live without football, but I also cannot live without art.’

Frey, who joined QPR from Royal Antwerp in January 2024, spent his first few months in West London recreating the things he saw in his new city on a large canvas with black fineliner pens.

‘I wasn’t sure where it was going to end up, but I told myself, let’s spend 10 to 20 minutes on it every day and overall, probably it has taken about 50 hours of work,’ he says.

There are the trees and squirrels of Holland Park, the people in the streets and Shepherd’s Bush market. There is the stadium at Loftus Road, shirts of former players and, looming large, an image of QPR legend Bowles who died at the age of 75, just a month after Frey arrived.

Frey’s first steps in art were in his native Switzerland with his grandfather

‘When you are in the stadium, you feel he is still there,’ says Frey. ‘That’s why I drew him looking over us and the shirts because I think they are all part of the club even when they are no longer playing. The ghosts and the spirits of the old players live on.’

Unicorns in the sky are reference to his goal celebration, a finger raised from his forehead, which he says was the idea of QPR captain Jimmy Dunne.

Frey donated this work for public auction and raised more than £700, which will go to the QPR in the Community Trust.

Among the projects they run is Healthy Kickers which provides free football sessions for people with mental health challenges.

Frey and his wife Melis dropped in on one of the sessions as part of the EFL Week of Action this month, celebrating the impact of the 72 clubs on their communities.

Data shows more than a million people have engaged in such projects generating the equivalent of more than a billion pounds in social value across two seasons from 2022-23.

Frey’s painting of Antwerp, a monochrome cityscape with footballing features etched into a pale blue sky, raised almost £4,500 at auction for the Belgian club where he spent three years from 2021.

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Frey’s art became at first a hobby and then a therapeutic release from the pressures of football

Before that, during three years at Fenerbahçe, he painted in acrylics across an entire wall in his apartment. ‘The landlord was not very happy,’ says Frey. ‘He painted over it without waiting to ask the new people if they liked it.’

Fenerbahçe’s president Ali Koc showed more gratitude having commissioned an official painting for the Istanbul club. Frey produced for him a vibrant image in acrylics of the face of a football supporter screaming in wild celebration, as they tend to do at the Sukru Saracoglu stadium.

On loan at Schalke, he found team-mates starting to make requests. ‘Mostly they wanted pictures of themselves,’ he laughs. ‘Yeah, it’s all about them.’ And former Serbia international winger Miralem Sulejmani, a teammate of Frey’s at Young Boys, sent a request for a painting of his son.

‘He sent me pictures on the phone, but it is difficult to get the proportions right when you do it in this way,’ says Frey. ‘For a guy in Switzerland, I painted a picture of the house we used to share. For free, everything for free!’

He may not be making it pay but his art helps his football in different ways. Not only with relaxation and mindfulness but also as a positive visualisation process, the sort of thing recommended by some sports psychologists.

He’ll hope QPR can mount a promotion push in a tightly-congested Championship play-off race

‘I try to do a little bit of art almost every day,’ says Frey. ‘Sometimes it’s 20 minutes, on a day off maybe it’s two hours. I don’t paint on match days or the day before because I focus on the game.

‘Sometimes, I will do little sketches of what I think is going to happen on the pitch or what I want to happen and how I want to celebrate if I score a goal, and sometimes it works.

‘There was one time I had done some paintings in the week of me heading the ball in a certain way and when the match came, I scored a header like this. Sometimes it’s luck but it helps for sure.

‘If you paint yourself always sad in a corner then maybe you’re going to end up sad in a corner.’