Ariel graduated from Wimbledon School of Art in 1968. Since 1970, the main gallery for her work has been the Lumley Cazalet Gallery, London but her work has also been exhibited in the Frank Pearls Gallery and the Rumpelstiltskin in the United States and other galleries worldwide. She first exhibited with contemporaries at the Royal Academy in 1970, but since 1984, she has concentrated almost exclusively on her distinctive garden paintings which are done to individual commission, the best known of which are Lord Vesty’s Stowell Park, Glyndebourne and Lord Carrington’s Bledlow Manor.