A similar thing didn’t happen to me.
I drew shitty little pictures and didn’t make it as an artist so moved to Japan, but got sick of Japanese people and moved to China, but got sick of Chinese people and then moved to Germany and I’m currently in the process of getting sick of Germans.
Where did the art go? Now I just cut myself shaving and I think I may well bleed to death.
So I wish you luck in your endeavor and I would like to warn you to keep your razor sharp as you are less likely to cut yourself shaving with a sharp razor. I used a dull one because I was too lazy to get a new one out of the pack and now look at how foolish I appear.
But in all honesty, keep working and NETWORK! 900% of getting somewhere in the art world is networking. Hang out as much as you can with the annoying assholes in their little artsy cliques. They may make you want to vomit, but you need them and their contacts. All the gallery exhibitions I get comes from being nice to these cocks.