The Brooklyn Rail

A Tribute to Charles Seliger (1926-2009)

Nobody on Charles’s block in Pelham knew he was totally unlike the rest of them. Wearing a sport coat and a bow tie, he’d enter and leave his house like anyone else, but if his neighbors cared to look (or stayed up late enough), they’d notice his light was on deep into the night, either in his tiny studio at the top of the stairs or in his bedroom, as he kept easels in each place.