Seçil Erel is a London-based Turkish-British artist working between studios in London and Istanbul. Her abstract paintings investigate the connections between colour, light, movement and consciousness, bringing together influences drawn from Eastern and Western cultures, ancient visual traditions and contemporary experience.
Erel’s practice has evolved from the precise geometric compositions that characterised her earlier work towards a more intuitive and expressionistic visual language. Through layers of oil paint, repeated gestures and carefully constructed relationships between colour and texture, she creates what might be understood as emotional landscapes—spaces in which physical, psychological and energetic experiences coexist.
Central to her work is a search for harmony: between the mind and the body, the material and the spiritual, and the individual and the wider world. Her paintings encourage moments of reflection while proposing that abstraction can offer new ways of seeing, feeling and understanding our relationship with ourselves and our surroundings.
Erel holds both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Painting from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and is pursuing a second MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London. Since the early 2000s, she has presented numerous solo exhibitions in London, Istanbul, Ankara and New York, alongside international group exhibitions and art fairs. Her work was included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London in 2021.
Her works are held in significant collections, including the Sabancı Collection, OMM – Odunpazarı Modern Museum, Türkiye Ziraat Bankası, Türkiye İş Bankası, Akbank Sanat, Arkas, Demsa, Özyeğin and Papko, as well as established family and private collections internationally.
