Photos by Nora Edinger From a distance, the monochromatic work mimics a shadow.

WHEELING — There’s only so much brick wall a body can take.

This is something Michael Kreuger Jr. discovered over the summer, when he was methodically painting — one side at a time — the South Wheeling Victorian his family has called home for generations.

Kreuger — a preservation contractor who has crystal door knobs spilling out of his backpack — happily did the house’s front with its tidy windows and deeply inset front door. But, he was stymied when he turned the corner. The south side was a windowless, doorless expanse.

“That wall was just so boring,” Kreuger said. “All that gray paint.”

His attention wound up wandering while he painted. “I saw a reflection of my buddy’s wrought-iron fence on the house and I thought it would be cool if I traced it,” Kreuger said of a sudden whim that morphed into a two-story mural.

He painted the fence outline. And, somehow, a bit of Banksy spirit grabbed hold.

Kreuger — an Army veteran who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan — incorporated whatever he saw during long evening painting sessions.

“I saw a cat down the street, and I put that in. It wouldn’t be South Wheeling without a cat,” he said. One night, a mom and a young boy who was inexplicably carrying a dead snake wandered by. A livelier version of that is in there, too.

As is an owl, a squirrel and a bird — all tucked into the tree that forms the center of the piece. There are also people getting ready to look through a telescope at the night sky and a rope swing.

It’s hard to tell what might appear next, he noted, explaining that neighborhood children already enjoy coming by to search out the animals and he has kept tweaking the design well into the autumn. There is that one minor complaint, as well, he qualified. “My dog’s upset with me because I have a cat in there.”

Otherwise, neighbors and passersby have been happy, he said, noting it initially felt risky to cover an entire wall of his home with art. Kreuger suspects the positive reception is at least partly because he opted to stick to a monochrome gray.

“I didn’t want it to be big and flashy,” he said, acknowledging a mural on a residence could potentially go quite wrong.

But, the effect of dark gray images on a light gray wall is subtle, he said. It fools the eye enough that he’s caught the occasional viewer looking for the tree they initially think is casting a shadow.

BLANK CANVAS

Another viewer was intrigued enough to wonder if Kreuger’s work should appear in locations beyond the Jacob Street home. Rosemary Ketchum, a member of city council who represents South Wheeling, would like to see him become part of the city’s expanding public art initiative.

“South Wheeling muralist Michael Kreuger is doing incredible work to bring beauty to the neighborhood while enhancing an otherwise blank wall visible to walkers and drivers alike,” Ketchum said in email comments.

Noting that the recently opened Carlito’s soul food restaurant in North Wheeling incorporates murals, Ketchum said it would be neighborhood positive if work such as Kreuger’s could appear on more walls in both the public and private sector.

Krueger — whose grandfather Bill Kreuger was a U.S. Steel engineer who painted in oils for pleasure — said he is open to that idea. He has already done another mural on a bedroom wall inside his home and is committed to creating a sign-like piece for the side of friend Dave Knight’s silk-screening and embroidery business, Conrad Crafters.

“I’ll take it wherever it takes me,” Kreuger said. “There’s certain walls in Wheeling that are just perfect for this.”

If those walls are in South Wheeling — a neighborhood created to house the masses of laborers needed during the city’s industrial and manufacturing heyday — all the better, he added.

He pointed to the Foundry, an upscale cocktail bar just down the street and noted it is bringing non-residents into the heart of a micro-village that has been off the beaten track for some time.

“The neighborhood is coming back up,” Kreuger said. “I wanted to be a part of that.”