Erika Osborne received her BFA from the University of Utah in painting and drawing and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. Erika’s artwork deals with cultural connections to place and environment. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with over ten solo exhibitions and over 80 group exhibitions in recent years – including shows at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Nevada Museum of Art and the Chautauqua Institute. Erika has also been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a recent Fulbright fellowship. Her work has been highlighted in five books surveying the evolution of land and environmental art in the West. Erika’s work has also been featured in national publications along with international art magazines such as New American Paintings, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine and Southwest Art Magazine.
As well as being a practicing artist, Erika Osborne has dedicated herself to university level art education. After teaching painting and drawing, alongside environmentally driven field courses such as Land Arts of the American West, Wilderness Studio and Place: Appalachia at the University of New Mexico and West Virginia University, Erika currently teaches at Colorado State University where she is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History. At CSU Erika teaches all levels of painting alongside an interdisciplinary field courses such as Art and Environment, Cultural Extraction: Energy in the Humanities and Art in Forest Ecosystems. Erika has written about her pedagogical work in books and journals including, Arts Programming for the Anthropocene: Art in Community and Environment (Routledge Press) and Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life (Punctum Press).