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
Cham Hendon but the result is figurative, not abstract. Hendon's style has been referred to as "poured pointillism", and "synthetic impressionist portraits". The "unique glossy surfaces provoke the question 'How does he do that?'. There are many variations on the description of how the paintings are done, but most agree that the paintings are created by pouring the paint onto a canvas stretched on a flat surface. The canvas has a drawing on it to guide Hendon's work and the poured paint builds up a thick, multicolored surface that defines the shapes in the drawing. The resulting paintings are difficult to put