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
William Forsyth (artist) is a precursor of how his daughter Constance Forsyth, an artist in her own right, summed up his career: "Perhaps his most outstanding characteristic was his independence. He painted what he wanted to paint and in the way he wanted to paint it. He preferred to work in his own way, regardless of what other artists were exploiting in the way of styles and fads. He was never the kind of artist that followed theories or intellectual ideas about what or how to paint. He very early, before studying abroad, developed his own brush technique which varied very little over