Word to describe a person who has a lot of experience in a specific field

I'm looking for a word to describe a person who has significant experience in a particular field (for example, an artist who has worked in the music industry for more than 10 years).

There are some possibilities I have already considered, such as worldly-wise or mature, but these aren't quite what I'm looking for.

Solution 1:

Some possibilities include: professional, expert, seasoned, knowledgeable, proficient or simply experienced.

In your case I would go with 'seasoned' as it forms a neat collocation:

Several exhibitions are devoted to seasoned artists.

Mr. Barry is a seasoned artist, with hundreds of exhibitions under his belt.

Now, because of expanding opportunities, dancers start troupes long before they are seasoned artists.

Solution 2:

You could also consider "veteran"

a person who has had long experience in a particular field.

How long the experience needs to be before one is considered a veteran is quite subjective but I have certainly seen it applied to quite young people.

At 30, Alicia Keys is a music industry veteran with 35m albums sold

Solution 3:

An authority in their field:

An accepted source of expert information or advice. - TFD

(adj: authoritative)

Solution 4:

Not as common for artists, but a person who has extensive knowledge and expertise in a field is known in New York as a "maven". (From Yiddish, which is pervasive in the average New Yorker's vocabulary.) In fact, when you hear someone described as a "big muckety-muck" (big shot) it is a mid-western U.S. interpretation of the Yiddish "macha" or "big macha" - which is what we say in NY. Yiddish not only has a lot of great descriptive terms, but it's very onomatopoeic(?), so it easily becomes part of the lexicon.