Edith Milsk was born in St Paul, MN on Nov. 15, 1899. Working under her assumed name "Mark" Milsk studied at California School of Fine Art (Sacramento), Art Students League of NYC, and Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles.

Her early years were spent in the theater in the midwest after her father died when she was 8.  As a 19 year old she was in California, picking cherries and a year later she and a friend left San Francisco, walking and hitching rides to New York. After a few other travel adventures she returned to San Francisco in the early 1920's and became part of the Bohemian scene.  For a short time she was known as the "Cowgirl Artist" due to her studies of rodeos and cowboy portraits.

By the 1930s she had settled in San Francisco and had a studio on Montgomery Street. During the 1940s she married Ed Imperato, a merchant seaman who drifted in and out of her life. She died in San Pablo, CA on Dec. 21, 1982.