How people at the top stay there and how you can try to imitate them.
The idea that artists make art all day that gets filtered through and eventually leads to the top level art works, cream of the crops, so to speak, is appealing. It follows a generally accepted social theory of meritocracy and promotes hard work.
Well, consider that making and sharing their work with the rest of us is only half of the time put by an artist into their creative calling. What's the other half?
Artists need a community of fellow creative souls. They need it for support and feedback. Not comments and appraisal, but any emotional feedback to charge and recharge the emotional ether generating creative juices. Artists also need a community of fans who would receive their work and provide feedback, different, albeit still important.
Building a community takes time and energy and arguably even more so when it comes to maintaining that relationship. Because at the end of the day, the artist's name is associated with the work they do. But the community that helps filter through art is essentially anonymous. Do you know who gave Leonardo feedback on Mona Lisa? Me neither.
The work of maintaining a community that knows that it won't receive the recognition the artist would is hard. The work is to give, give, give without expecting anything in return, directly. The giving must never stop, no matter how succesful one gets.
Building a community that rallies behind you is an exercise in reciprocity that most wannabe-leaders fail at.