Sweet artist fed to animal (7)
I believe the answer is:
caramel
'sweet' is the definition.
(caramel is a kind of sweet)
'artist fed to animal' is the wordplay.
'artist' becomes 'ra' (Royal Academician, member of Royal Academy of Arts).
'fed to' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'animal' becomes 'camel' (I've seen this in other clues).
'ra' put into 'camel' is 'CARAMEL'.
(Other definitions for caramel that I've seen before include "Sugar solution heated till brown" , "It's produced by heating sugar until brown" , "Toffee-like sweet" , "Chewy sweet - burnt sugar" , "Cooked sugar" .)