About six weeks ago on a day off from work, my husband and I saw a sign advertising an estate sale and decided to stop. We had recently moved, upgrading from a one room apartment to a three room house, and estate sales had become an easy way to help fill all of the extra space we found ourselves owning.

Upon entering, we both noticed a gem – a hand-painted folding screen, composed of four small rectangular canvases, with a perfectly Zen scene of a local Japanese garden. The owners’ son had painted the peaceful wooden bridge crossing a still creek in watercolor. Sure, it wouldn’t win any awards or be featured in any art history books, but with its greens, grays, and ivories, it perfectly coordinated with the natural tones and Asian flair we were using in our living room. For $5, it was a steal. We paid, loaded it into the back seat of my car, stopped by the grocery store, and headed home.

As my husband looked for a place to display our new find, he was confused to discover that the folding screen could no longer stand up. We both stared at it, scratching our heads for awhile, until finally I noticed that the hinges weren’t working properly because the top of one of the canvases was warped. And that’s when I realized what had happened -- we hadn’t bumped it into anything on the way to the car, nor had we overlooked the warping when we bought it. Nope, the culprits were the 90+ degree weather, the notorious Midwestern river valley humidity, and the hour that the painting spent in my hot, dark gray car while we were in the grocery store for an hour.

The moral of the story: as the seasons and weather are changing, refresh yourself on how to best preserve your custom oil painting in your current climate conditions. Reread the care guidelines available on our blog to remind yourself about how to make sure your painting will last, like ensuring that you’re displaying your oil painting away from extreme temperature sources and extreme moisture levels.

Fortunately, the painting we damaged was just a $5 estate sale find – nothing with any real emotional value to use and nothing we had spent very much money on – and had wall hanging hinges on the back that still work relatively well. But it was a reminder: canvases really are sensitive to the elements, so be aware of what your painting is exposed to!