Canvas white pigment and calcium carbonate is rather brittle and susceptible to cracking. As lead-based paint is poisonous, care has to be taken in using it. Various alternative and more flexible canvas primers are commercially available, the most popular being a synthetic latex paint composed of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate, bound with a thermo-plastic emulsion. Many artists have painted onto unprimed canvas, such as Jackson Pollock, Kenneth Noland, Francis Bacon, Helen Frankenthaler, Dan Christensen, Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Color Field painters, Lyrical Abstractionists and others. Staining acrylic paint into the fabric of cotton duck canvas was more benign and less
Atsuko Tanaka (artist) of internationally important public collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art, MOMA,in New York. MOMA's online collection (see external links) features a large, untitled 1964 Tanaka work (synthetic polymer paint on canvas). Nearly tall and over wide, this piece, according to MOMA's online description, "evolved from Tanaka's performance "Electric Dress"", and "vividly records the artist's gestural application of layers and skeins of multicolored acrylic paint on the canvas as it lay on the floor." Atsuko Tanaka (artist) Atsuko Tanaka (田中 敦子, "Tanaka Atsuko"; February 10, 1932 – December 3, 2005) was a pioneering Japanese avant-garde artist. Tanaka was