Originally from the Midwest, Pamela Marks maintains a studio in Connecticut. She received her BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MFA in painting from the University of Arizona, Tucson. Following graduate school, Marks worked as an artist in residence for the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She took her studio practice into schools and communities throughout diverse regions in Arizona, including the Navajo reservation, rural border towns, and inner-city schools. Within this context, Marks worked as a “teaching artist,” learning how art and education combine and thrive in different communities and cultures. Concurrently, she was a founder and member of an Arizona regional artist cooperative (DAC), and she taught courses at the University of Arizona, Pima College, and the Tucson Museum of Art School. In 1991, Marks joined the teaching faculty at Connecticut College, where she taught from 1991 to 2023. She also served as Gallery Director for the Cummings Arts Center for fourteen years. Marks taught summer sessions at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in France, and in 2004, she was a visiting critic at Yale University School of Art.

In keeping a balance within her studio work, she welcomed the travel and uninterrupted studio time found during artist residencies. In 1986, she lived four months in the Dominican Republic as an artist-in-residence at Altos de Chavon, and in 2000, she was the first PASCA artist-in-residence in Auvillar, France. Since then she has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, VCCA, the American Academy in Rome, and the Golden Foundation. While at the Golden Foundation, she worked closely with paint technicians investigating the many new developments in waterborne paint technology.

Her artworks have been exhibited in France, Greece, Scotland, Japan, the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic and across the US. Her paintings are included in several collections, including The Tucson Museum of Art, IBM, Tokyo Ana Hotel, Florence Griswold Museum, Benziger Winery Collection, Pabst Brewing Corporation, Singapore Sheraton Hotel, and the Colorado Sangre de Cristo Art Center. Marks was awarded an honorarium and purchase prize for her multi-paneled artwork, "Healing," which is on permanent display at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Library in Tucson.