An artist as well as an actress, Markham's works seek out every day dramas, assisted by her use of high contrast and shadows. Markham attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1907 to 1909, when she left the Institute to work at Chicago's Little Theater and later with the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts. She became an illustrator to supplement her acting career and in 1930 attended classes at the Art Students League in New York, where she started to work in lithography. Her employment with the Federal Art Project in 1936 coincided with what are considered the finest examples of her lithographic œuvre. The New York Herald Tribune named Markham among the Federal Art Project's Graphic Arts Division artists who "assist particularly in carrying on the project's graphic work to a success unsurpassed by any of its other departments" after viewing the spring 1937 exhibition of "Recent Fine Prints" at the Federal Art Project Gallery in New York.
Framed under glass