While I agree with the value of seeing one's self as a fighter, I wouldn't be so hard on the term "artist" or conflate it with the idea of a
fine artist: one who paints, sculpts and so on. Strictly speaking, an artist
does things, and
makes things: "artisan," "artifice" are derived from "art." I was given a new appreciation of the word when someone pointed out that in Classical education, the liberal arts, based on "thinking" instead of professional practice (e.g. medicine/architecture) were grammar, logic and rhetoric, then arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. In this view, all stuff that we do or make, presumably in opposition to stuff that God did or make, would come under the heading of the "arts."
As for concrete standards for a practice, they're artificial, made by us. In effect, by creating standards, we would be
making something, so we would be artists.
So yes, people who call themselves "martial artists" and have no discipline, focus, investigation or practice are not good martial artists. I've seen enough of those. But to me, the practitioners who investigate, craft, study, and practice a martial discipline diligently (as you do) are as worthy of the term "artist" as one who studied classical rhetoric or mathematics with the same discipline and focus.
I think that the bad martial artists are the ones who are misusing the term "artist," to give themselves license to be ineffective because they don't understand what an artist really is. I wouldn't accept their inaccurate framing of the term.
That's my opinion, of course.
