A woman emailed the studio about a piece she had owned for nine years. She was moving house and wanted to know, before the movers arrived, what she was allowed to do to it. Could she wrap it. Could she wipe it first. Nine years of living with an acrylic painting and nobody had ever told her, which is fair enough, because nobody usually does.
The good news is that there is very little to it. An original acrylic on canvas is a tougher object than most people assume. The care it needs amounts to a soft brush, a sensible wall, and a short list of things to never do. Canvas giclée prints behave much the same way.
The bad news, such as it is, involves a spray bottle. We will get to that.
Key Takeaways
Dust Dry, Never Wet: A soft, clean, dry brush is the whole cleaning routine. Water and cleaning products do the damage.
Keep It Out of Direct Sun: Strong daylight alters a canvas so slowly that nobody notices until the change is done.
Stable Beats Ideal: Paintings tolerate a normal room. What they dislike is a space that swings hot to cold and damp to dry.
Carry It by the Edges: Never press the front of a canvas. Never rest one face down on a hard surface.
Leave Repairs to a Conservator: A dent, a tear, or a stubborn mark is worth a professional rather than an experiment.
Questions about a specific piece are welcome through the studio.
What You Are Actually Looking After
James paints in acrylics, and has done throughout the current body of work. The medium behaves differently from oil in ways that matter for care.
Acrylic dries into a flexible film rather than hardening the way oil does over decades. That flexibility is why acrylic on canvas travels well and tolerates a stretcher that expands and contracts slightly with the seasons. An acrylic painting is less brittle than an old oil. It is also far less likely to develop the fine crackle pattern people associate with antique pictures.
The trade-off is at the surface. That flexible film stays very slightly softer than cured oil, which is why abrasive cleaning and solvents are the risk rather than time itself.
Dusting, and the Habit to Break
The routine is a soft brush, dry, used gently, perhaps twice a year.
A clean makeup brush or a soft artist’s brush works. Dry microfibre works too, lightly, on flat surfaces. Bristles handle textured paint better, because they reach into the ridges without dragging at the raised edges of the paint. Work from the top down. That is genuinely all a healthy acrylic painting needs.
Here is the habit worth breaking. Do not spray anything on it. Not glass cleaner, not furniture polish, not a dilute soap solution, and not water on a corner of a cloth. The wrong liquid can lift or bloom an acrylic surface. Household sprays also carry solvents and silicones that nobody designed to meet an artwork. The damage is often invisible for a week and permanent afterwards.
If something has genuinely landed on the surface, stop and ask a conservator. Sap, candle soot, a splash from a vase and a fingerprint in the varnish are all recoverable in the hands of somebody trained, and all of them get considerably harder to fix after a well-meaning first attempt at home. Cleaning remains the single most common way somebody harms a piece while trying to help it.
Light, Heat and the Air in the Room
Direct sunlight is the one environmental factor that reliably causes change, and it works over years.
Choose a wall that never takes strong afternoon sun. Indirect daylight is fine and ordinary room lighting is fine. Where the only sensible wall gets real sun, a sheer curtain or UV film on the window solves most of it.
Heat and humidity matter next. A canvas expands and contracts with the room, and a space that swings hard between extremes puts the stretcher through a slow workout. Above a fireplace in regular use, in an unheated porch, or in a bathroom are the three placements to avoid. A normal, heated, lived-in room is exactly right, and nobody needs to buy a humidifier for a painting.
Kitchens deserve one mention. Airborne grease travels further than people expect. Across the room from the stove is fine. Directly beside the range invites a cleaning problem later.
Handling, Moving and Storage
Hold a stretched canvas by the outer edges of the wooden bars. Never by the top edge alone on a large piece, and never with a thumb pressed against the painted front.
Pressure on the face of a canvas can leave a dent that shows in raking light long after the thumb is gone. If a piece has to lie down, lay it face up, and put something soft under it.
For a move, wrap the canvas in glassine or clean acid-free paper first. Then bubble wrap, then a rigid box or corner protectors. Avoid plastic directly against the paint surface. Trapped moisture and plastic film do not belong against an acrylic painting. Stand it upright in the vehicle rather than flat under other boxes.
Long-term storage wants the same logic. Upright, off the floor, away from exterior walls, in a room somebody would sit in comfortably.
Does a Canvas Giclée Need Different Care?
Very little differs. The studio prints its giclées on canvas, stretches them over one and a half inch wooden bars, and gallery wraps them with finished sides. They present the same surface to a room that an original does.
Treat one the same way. Dry brush, no sprays, no direct sun, stable room. The matted small works are the exception, because they sit behind glass in a standard frame. Glass takes ordinary cleaner applied to the cloth rather than sprayed at the frame.
Anyone building a collection across formats ends up with a mix of these, and the routine is close enough that one habit covers everything.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I clean an acrylic painting?
Dust it with a soft, dry brush once or twice a year. Do not use water, glass cleaner, furniture polish, or any solvent. For anything beyond dust, consult a professional conservator rather than attempting it yourself.
Do acrylic paintings fade over time?
Modern artist-grade acrylics hold their colour well, and the realistic risk comes from prolonged direct sunlight rather than age. A piece kept off a sun-blasted wall should look the same for decades.
Should I varnish or re-varnish a painting I own?
No, not on your own. Varnishing decisions belong to the artist or a conservator, and an amateur coat is difficult to reverse. Ask before anyone applies anything to the surface.
What should I do if my painting gets scratched or dented?
Leave it alone and contact a conservator. Dents in canvas can often be relaxed professionally, and attempts to push one out from behind usually make the area worse.
How should a painting be packed for a move?
Glassine or acid-free paper against the surface, then padding, then a rigid outer layer, and transported upright. The shipping page covers how the studio packs and sends each piece.
Thirty Years From Now
The woman who emailed wrapped the piece in paper and stood it upright behind the passenger seat. She hung it on a north-facing wall that weekend.
That is the whole of it. An acrylic painting asks for almost nothing, and most of the care it needs is restraint. What harms paintings is nearly always something somebody did with good intentions and a bottle of something.
If you own a piece and want advice about a specific situation, the studio is glad to help.