Artist as Social Geographer?

The Concise Oxford Dictionary's definition of social geography is
· n. the study of people and their environment with particular emphasis on social factors.

As artists are we not to a degree social geographers? We study with our observations and presentations. We draw and paint, express and create works that describe people and their environment. Consumer driven art is for pretty things, harmonious and melodic resolution and happy endings. But as artistic social geographers one can not ignore the erosion, the morphing and mutating of our changing environment. A landscape must equally present the overdevelopment, the violation of the land as well as its natural beauty. The dynamism of our world demands accurate categorising in this era as much as when the early explorers recorded newly encountered species cataloguing and identifying these in their drawings.

The challenge is to chose how to engage with our subject matter in a manner that is truthful...