Erika Navarrete was born and raised in the town of Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley of California. She received her BFA in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003 and her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2008. Navarrete is currently an instructor at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville. She maintains an active studio practice investigating relationships between people and the structure of the home through the mediums of painting, drawing and printmaking and exhibits her work locally and nationally.

"My work centers on a long-term investigation into the relationships between people, particularly women, and their own self-awareness. Through painting, drawing and printmaking I attempt to visually create moments that cannot be clearly articulated in words. I am interested in the sensation of an awkward silence, an expressive gesture, a pensive moment, the moments that are neither before, nor after, but somewhere inbetween.

I often pair the figure with food, various flora and fauna, and interior space to address the complexities of fulfillment, restraint, indulgence, desire, denial and mortality. These are issues that correspond to the language and emotions surrounding intimate relationships, our inner dialogue and self-evaluation. My current work furthers these ideas, honing in on the behaviors we engage in when we believe no one is watching. Are these behaviors self-destructive, or simply a light escape from reality?

Additionally, the exterior structure of the home itself has a role in the work. The homes I am interested in stand out as icons within the places I have grown up and lived. From me, they carry a narrative weight because of how they fit within their environments, but also how I have come to know them. Like the figures in my work, the houses insinuate a history of growth and neglect; revival or deterioration; a history of people passing through them, known or assumed."