Editing Color field (section)

=== Acrylic paint ===
{{Main|Acrylic paint}}
In 1972, former [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] [[curator]] [[Henry Geldzahler]] said:
<blockquote>Color field, curiously enough or perhaps not, became a viable way of painting at exactly the time that acrylic paint, the new plastic paint, came into being. It was as if the new paint demanded a new possibility in painting, and the painters arrived at it. Oil paint, which has a medium that is quite different, which isn't water-based, always leaves a slick of oil, or puddle of oil, around the edge of the color. Acrylic paint stops at its own edge. Color field painting came in at the same time as the invention of this new paint.<ref>De Antonio, Emile. ''Painters Painting, a Candid History of The Modern Art Scene 1940–1970'' Abbeville Press, 1984. 81. {{ISBN|0-89659-418-1}}</ref></blockquote>

Acrylics were first made commercially available in the 1950s as [[mineral spirits|mineral spirit]]-based paints called [[Magna paint|Magna]]<ref>Terry Fenton [http://www.sharecom.ca/noland/materials online essay] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121041610/http://www.sharecom.ca/noland/materials |date=2021-01-21 }} about [[Kenneth Noland]], and acrylic paint, accessed April 30th, 2007</ref> offered by [[Leonard Bocour]]. Water-based acrylic paints were subsequently sold as "latex" house paints, although acrylic dispersion uses no [[latex]] derived from a [[Para rubber tree|rubber tree]]. Interior "latex" house paints tend to be a combination of [[Binder (material)|binder]] (sometimes acrylic, [[Polyvinyl chloride|vinyl]], [[Polyvinyl acetate|pva]] and others), [[filler (materials)|filler]], [[pigment]] and [[water]]. Exterior "latex" house paints may also be a "co-polymer" blend, but the very best exterior water-based paints are 100% acrylic.

Soon after the water-based acrylic binders were introduced as house paints, both artists – the first of whom were Mexican muralists – and companies began to explore the potential of the new binders. Acrylic artist paints can be thinned with water and used as [[wash (visual arts)|washes]] in the manner of watercolor paints, although the washes are fast and permanent once dry. Water-soluble artist-quality acrylic paints became commercially available in the early 1960s, offered by [[Liquitex]] and Bocour under the trade name of ''Aquatec''. Water-soluble Liquitex and Aquatec proved to be ideally suited for stain painting. The staining technique with water-soluble acrylics made diluted colors sink and hold fast into raw [[canvas]]. Painters such as [[Kenneth Noland]], [[Helen Frankenthaler]], [[Dan Christensen]], [[Sam Francis]], [[Larry Zox]], [[Ronnie Landfield]], [[Larry Poons]], [[Sherron Francis]], [[Jules Olitski]], [[Gene Davis (painter)|Gene Davis]],  [[Ronald Davis]], [[Georg Karl Pfahler]], [[Sam Gilliam]] and others successfully used water-based acrylics for their new stain, color field paintings.<ref>Junker, Howard. ''The New Art: It's Way, Way Out'', [[Newsweek]], July 29, 1968, pp.3, 55–63.</ref>