Omar the Artist

This is almost a week old, but it’s new to me:

Omar Vizquel’s baseball career was on decline the last few seasons in San Francisco. But life in the Bay Area rejuvenated him in other ways.

“I painted a lot the three years I was there,” said Vizquel, whose artistic portraits (note: gallery includes some nude images) were featured in an exhibition in September in San Francisco’s Caldwell Snyder Gallery. “I wanted to show the whole thing I did during my stay there. It went great.”

Vizquel’s 30 water colors and oil paintings were for sale, with part of the proceeds and the admission benefitting the Giants Community Fund. He estimates that he sold “about half.”

The gallery announced the exhibition by saying that “like his performance on the field, Vizquel demonstrates vitality and focused determination within his work.” It lauded Vizquel’s “sensitivity to humanity, romance and the larger questions of our existence.”

Vizquel told the San Francisco Chronicle that he is a fan of European figurativists Odd Nerdrum and Lucian Freud, calling them “the two most exciting contemporary artists living right now.”

I’m guessing most ballplayers wouldn’t be able to say “Odd Nerdrum” without chuckling. Hell, I hardly can.