Never Store a Painting in an Arizona Garage

This is a short one, and if you only ever read one thing I write about caring for art, I would like it to be this.

Do not store a painting in your garage. Not for the summer, not for a remodel, not for a month while you decide where it goes.

What a garage here actually is

An uninsulated Arizona garage in July regularly runs well past 120 degrees in the afternoon and drops thirty or forty degrees overnight.

Conservation guidance for paintings asks for a stable range somewhere around 61 to 77 degrees. Your garage is not near that range and it is not stable. It is doing a full cycle every single day, for months.

What that does

Heat accelerates every chemical process happening inside the materials, so the piece simply ages faster. That part is invisible until it is not.

The daily swing is the more mechanical problem. The canvas expands and contracts, the ground and paint layers move at different rates, and over a season of that you get cracking that was not there before.

And the dryness compounds it. Binders stiffen, surfaces get brittle, and brittle surfaces crack when they move.

The other garage problems

Dust and grit, which get into a textured surface and do not come out. Vehicle exhaust, which deposits a film. Pests. Anything leaning against anything. And the very common one, a bicycle or a ladder that finds its way against the front of a canvas.

Also water. Monsoon water comes under a garage door with remarkable enthusiasm, and art is almost always stored on the floor.

Where to put it instead

Anywhere inside the conditioned part of the house. A closet, a spare room, under a bed if it fits and is protected. Interior beats perfect.

Vertical, never flat, and never with anything stacked on top. Padding between the floor and the bottom edge. Face in toward a smooth wall rather than a textured one, or face out with a spacer so nothing touches the surface.

If you need real storage, climate controlled units exist here and are worth the difference. Confirm it is genuinely climate controlled and not just cooled, because those are different products.

If it has already been out there

Bring it in, let it come back to room temperature slowly, and then look at it properly in daylight.

Look for a canvas that has gone slack, any lifting or flaking at the edges, and any fine cracking in the surface. If you find something, ask before you touch it, and above all do not tighten the stretcher keys.

If it is a piece of mine, write to me and I will tell you honestly what I am looking at and whether it needs anything.

Warmly,

Dani