Townsend compares her art process to a Hip Hop song, where she samples and references pop culture to structure her work. She believes that certain fictional characters and icons are so ingrained in pop culture that they are essentially a part of the real world. This is similar to René Magritte's "The Treachery of Images," where a pipe is both a pipe and a painting of a pipe. Similarly, Mickey Mouse is a mouse, but he’s also just an animated character, although he has a presence in the world just as a real mouse does. Townsend reckons there's no valuable difference between painting a fictional character like Big Bird or a real canary because they both take place in our culture and clearly communicate their form or existence. The aforementioned statement pertains to individuals who do not hold a high regard for pop and conceptual art.