MEETING one-time city whizz kid turned artist Michael K. Freed is an interesting experience. He greets you with a cheery grin and friendly handshake and then warns you that he's "a bit of a miserable bugger."

He isn't of course but, heaven knows, he has good cause to be.

At the age of 61 he is nearly blind, suffers chronic back pain and has to regularly undergo gruelling dialysis sessions to aid his failing kidneys.

There are sundry other health problems, but Freed assures me: "You don't want to know."

Oh yes, and as if all this weren't enough, his wife Valerie suffers from MS and is confined to a wheelchair.

However despite his problems, Poole-based Freed is enjoying a new leas of life as an artist.

He used to use acrylics until he snapped a tendon in his finger ("typical of my luck", he tells me ruefully).

Now he tends to use brush pens and his work takes the form of hundreds of strange but intriguing drawings.

Many are based on his Jewish roots and feature traditional Klezmer musicians, others include everything from dancing rabbits to smoking penguins. "Don't ask me why," he says.

Freed's work has been likened to that of L.S. Lowry. He cites Toulouse Lautrec as a prime influence.

He started drawing seriously after amazing himself with an impromptu sketch of a Punch and Judy man on a coach trip to Devon.

Later he sat in on an art lesson at the Fourways Day Centre, Parkstone. He hasn't looked back since.

Although his eyesight is so bad that he could officially register as blind he refuses to do so. He can still see well enough to draw, and anyhow he says: "I don't want people feeling sorry for me."

For a man whose fortunes have changed hugely over the years - in the 60s he was a merchant banker and stockbroker while today he is a man of far more modest means - he seems remarkably philosophical about his lot.

He recently told Disability Arts In London magazine: "Financially it (my art) hasn't brought me much but from an ego perspective, it's been great.

"I've spent my life handling millions of pounds on the Stock Exchange in the city, but when I sold my first print for £10, I was absolutely over the moon," he added.

Michael K. Freed's work is on show at The White Wall at Poole Public Library in the Dolphin Centre, Poole, until the end of May.