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
Ian Davenport in the British Art Show. In 1991, he was nominated for the annual Turner Prize. Many of Davenport's works are made by pouring paint onto a tilted surface and letting gravity spread the paint over the surface. He has usually worked on medium-density fibreboard rather than canvas, and most often employs household gloss paint, meaning the viewer can see their own reflection in the work. He has made a number of diptychs and triptychs as well as single works. For the "Days Like These" exhibition at Tate Britain in 2003, Davenport made a thirteen-metre-high mural by dripping lines of differently