Ariel Luke studied at Wimbledon School of Art where she was also editor of the art school magazine. She then exhibited with the young contemporaries at the Royal Academy and at other venues in London. For the next decade she concentrated mainly on screen printing and showing at several galleries in London, but principally with the Lumley Cazalet Gallery where she had a one man show in 1998. She also showed her work in Sydney, Bahrain, Hong Kong and New York.
Ariel was introduced to screen printing at art school, but soon set up a press at her home and over a period of years would deliver work to galleries on, an almost regular basis, of every 2 weeks.
In 1984 she was commissioned to paint her first house/garden and since that time has completed over 100 pictures of this genre in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, France and Italy. She has exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show and at Courson, near Paris. Amongst the better known are paintings of Glydebourne, Garsington, Stowell Park and Bledlow Manor as well as some intricate and charming London gardens.
When beginning a new commission her routine is to visit the garden and discuss with the owner the parts of the garden they would like to feature in the picture. She then returns to her studio to complete detailed pencil drawings of the layout of the painting and probably with options for the owner to choose from. Once decisions are made she will return to the garden to do the watercolour studies that she uses as a reference when completing the painting in her studio. Her medium is tempera on gesso. A style of painting she was attracted to when copying a 14C Italian painting at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Most of her paintings have a raised border for various vignettes (to include smaller details of the garden), so she asks a carpenter to cut the panels on which she paints to a size agreed with her clients.
Ariel Luke has also designed an airmail letter for UNICEF and a set of stamps for the Jersey Post Office as well as teaching at Radley College. In the last few years she has painted portraits of children and in 2019 had a figurative exhibition ‘Portraits for Pleasure’.
Galleries where she has shown over the years include Casa Pupo, Ebury Gallery, Editions Alecto, Graffitie Gallery, Johathan Phiips, Zella 9, Studio 18. More recently she showed at the Chelsea Town Hall and the Copperfield gallery.