Mary Burke is a critically acclaimed Irish artist, who, more than most realist painters, has chronicled domestic and built environments in suburbia. Burke has been consistently productive, working from a studio she founded in Dublin’s north inner city in the 80s. Recipient of numerous awards, she has exhibited throughout the country, the USA and Canada. Her work is included in many of Ireland’s national, local authority, public and private collections. Since 2015, Burke’s practice has shifted in a more socially engaged direction resulting in a new dynamic. ‘‘Townscape’ (2015-2019) is about the town and how life is lived in the town, through the house’. 1 Her subject matter is unchanged. However, Burke adopts an anthropologically sensitive approach. Each work is realised through direct engagement with ‘participant’ homes in culturally diverse domestic contexts - in this instance, Stradbally Town in Co. Laois. The project constitutes a durational public art process evolved over four years. Burke began by making visits to twelve homes within walking distance of Stradbally Town. Entry was negotiated by Muireann Ní Chonaill, Arts Officer and Curator of Townscape, and undertaken with the permission of the household owner. Thereafter Mary selects the site, angle and composition. Visual outputs are later returned to the household for their choice of dissemination (e.g. cards) resulting in a sustainable project evoking additional response and therefore plus-valence. While there were conversations with occupants, these were not the focus - the physical, built and occupied environment, whether inside or out, is the subject, the accumulated artworks forming a colourful contemporary portrait of the town. In this way her working methodology constitutes a reciprocal process that began three years earlier with ‘House Portraits’.2 Burke acknowledges drawing inspiration from the writings of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard whose The Poetics of Space (1958) applies the method of phenomenology to architecture based on lived experience and the personal. Novel Compositions the art and poetry of the mundane 5 l-r, details from: Christine and David; Fr. Jim; Geraldine and Sean; John and Rachel; Rita and Pat.