I can relate to your message, because I have a similar goal than yours, except it is in writing, not painting. When I read work that I admire, I wish "I would like to depict reality or a dramatic situation as well as they do." However, do I really want to be able to measure the quality of my art? Do I want art to be graded on a scale that would determine what is better art than the other? Personally, I don't. Moreover, if you define a level and reach it... what next? Do you stop evolving?
Therefore, I have set up goals that are a bit different:
*Improve the quality of my writing.
By reading classics, by always revising the rules of the language (French and English), by discovering new authors, by educating myself on fiction techniques, etc... (educating myself in general and see other people's works)
*Productivity goals, such as:
-showing up in front of my paper everyday (which is quite new to me)
-setting deadlines for projects
-introducing a word count objective (I'm not doing it at the moment, but at one point, I set a goal to write 500 words everyday
-Setting a number of editors/publishers to submit my writing to
Etc etc
So my answer to your question is to set a goal to always improve, even if you get recognition, good reviews, good money from it, etc.
Productivity goals also help improving because art is an activity in which you get better by doing it.  |