PAST EXHIBITION AT JARO GALLERY

You are invited to our spring show exhibiting works by Ariel Luke and her daughter Poppy Whatmore.


Opening: Thursday 21st March until Saturday 20th April

OPEN FOR VIEWING TUESDAY - SATURDAY 10AM - 3PM

“In 1984 Ariel 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.”

PORTRAIT STUDIO

Portraits by Ariel Luke in water colour, oil or acrylic are available to be commissioned. Prices starts from £300 and we welcome you into our in-house portrait studio for a quick photo from which Ariel will work from. This process makes it perfect for children and adults alike.

The Catalyst - 2022 (Concrete & Found Chair)

POPPY WHATMORE

The installations I create address struggles of lived experience. I am interested in the potential of language as a reflective means to address how we experience the everyday. I explore tensions especially between the public and private. Fragments of memories are woven into material enactments or even a chosen site. These frozen moments include instances of jeopardy, entrapment and concealment, undermined or overwhelmed in outcome.” - Poppy Whatmore

BIOGRAPHY

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.

FIND OUT MORE

Original works and commissions are available exclusively through JARO Gallery.

If you are interested in discussing more about this artist please don’t hesitate to contact me.