[1] As a child, she attended weekly art lessons under Miss Alida Goodwin, a teacher at South Division High School and All Saints Cathedral Institute, where Emily later graduated.
These experiences combined provided her with a unique early education compared to the primarily German-speaking community of artists in the area.
She participated in the Public Works Art Project, created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, as a planner and an exhibiting artist.
Early work of Emily Parker Groom reflected an English style, as opposed to the German academic influence common amongst other Wisconsin artists.
Many of them glow with bougainvillea and other flowers in a country where every blossom is opulent and rich in size and color," wrote a newspaper reporter.
[5] In 1904 she entered a work at the Tenth Annual Exhibition of Art Students League of Chicago titled A Portrait of Mrs. Rollin B.