Erika Diehl earned her MFA from the L. E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland College Institute of Art. She uses time as a medium and context in her abstract painting. Through a phenomenological approach to her work, she engages the struggle of painting against the nature of language to materialize the experience of time as a lived, contingent process. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Diehl has exhibited widely since 2003 including five solo shows in the last decade and more than 20 group shows.  Her work has been exhibited at the Las Cruces Art Museum, Las Cruces, NM; Lyons Weir Gallery, New York, NY; Homeland Security Domestic Gallery, Dallas, TX; and in the exhibitions On Loan - Formalities, juried by Cara Ober, Area 405, Baltimore, MD; and Smörgåsbord, juried by Paddy Johnson, at Gallery CA, Baltimore, MD run at the time by Deana Haggag. Her most recent solo shows, Khôra, at Marfa Open in Marfa, Texas; and AETAS, at BasketShop Gallery in Cincinatti, Ohio, expose her research into the shifting nature of temporal experience during a time of catastrophic loss and uncertainty..

Diehl attended the 2020 Marfa Open residency in Marfa, Texas along with numerous other residencies over the last decade including the Jentel Foundation Residency Fellowship in Banner, Wyoming, and Koganecho AIR in Yokohama, Japan. In addition she is a College Art Association Travel Grant recipient, and was a Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize semi-finalist.