Toronto FC goalkeeper Stefan Frei is a perfectionist, a guy unsatisfied with a shutout performance if he knows he was guilty of a couple of missed kicks.

Given those demands, the 25-year-old native of Switzerland needs an outlet, something that will take him far away from the pressures of the game.

For more than a decade, art has provided that escape. But his passion lies not in sketches of family and animals or the still life of a fruit bowl on a table.

Frei, who hails from a small town in the Rhine Valley, is influenced by graffiti, the public markings — considered vandalism by some — that were popularized in New York City and other urban centres in the 1970s and ’80s. But his format is a pen tablet, a computer for hand-drawing, not spray paint.

“As a ’keeper, it’s all mental. I’m not going to get tired from the physical aspects of a game,” says Frei, a fixture in the TFC net since he was chosen in the first round, 13th overall, in the 2009 Major League Soccer SuperDraft out of the University of California, Berkeley. “But you have to focus 100 per cent and you can be dead tired because of it.

“So, even though you don’t completely switch off your mind when you draw, it’s really nice to focus on something where you know you can make mistakes,” says Frei, who leads MLS in saves with 70. “And even if you make a mistake, it’s nice because it might lead you somewhere else.”

Frei remembers himself as “a little kid out doodling on the pavement.” But it wasn’t until he and his buddies got into the whole street culture of skateboarding and hip hop music that he got turned on to grafitti, which is considered one of the pillars of that form of musical expression.

“I’ve always really liked explosive, colourful things, even in terms of clothing,” says Frei, who routinely wears fluorescent yellow and green goaltending uniforms in games, “and graffiti has exactly that.”

As a youngster, Frei took the train to school and soccer practice. All around the stations he would see bright graffiti and “that inspired me,” he says. But his budding soccer career stopped him from any such displays of his own.

“I would have loved to, honestly,” Frei says somewhat sheepishly. “But I knew it was too risky for me in terms of what I wanted to do.

“At that point, I was 14-15 and just kind of breaking into the national team, which was my big dream. For me to possibly get caught and have my parents not support me in soccer because of it just wasn’t worth it.”

Frei, who was a member of the Swiss under-15 national team, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his family in 2001, at the age of 15. While starring in net in high school, he also thrived in drawing classes, where he incorporated graffiti-style into his art projects any time it was possible.

But it wasn’t until Frei became a professional soccer player after three outstanding years at UC Berkeley that he took his art to another level.

Frei’s mom and brother bought him the pen tablet as a Christmas gift. With that and drawing programs, including a 3D one he’s just discovering, he’s continued to work at his desktop computer at home — mostly during the week, often for hours at a time — refining his own lettering technique and studying the work of some of his favourite artists in books and on websites.

To date, most of Frei’s work has been for himself and his family — pieces for his dad and girlfriend, birthday cards, T-shirts, hats. He’s now working on a big piece for his living room combining graffiti with inspiration from a sci-fi video game and the work of Toronto DJ deadmau5 (pronounced dead mouse).

But last season, as part of a year-end TFC charity silent auction, Frei did a piece. Featuring the team logo, the Toronto skyline as seen from BMO Field and the “All For One” slogan for the 2010 season, it sold for $450.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

One day — “I’m talking 15 or 20 years from now,” Frei says with a laugh — he’d like to have a collection to exhibit. But in his art, as in net, he knows there’s a lot of work to do before that day comes.

“I’ll never master it,” he says. “As soon as you’ve done one piece, you see the flaw and you want to do the next one. That’s just the way it is.”