Pansy Stockton was born in Eldorado Springs, Colorado, outside of Boulder, where her parents David and Jennie Ferguson ran the Grand View Hotel. In this setting, she most likely developed her love of nature, which later she would literally include in her assemblage art. In 1918, she married Roscoe Stockton, a public school teacher, and the couple lived on Holly Street in Denver. After working in oils, watercolors, and tempera, around 1920 Stockton began created what she called her "sun paintings." She coined the term "sun painting," because "The materials I use get their colors from the sun, and the finished picture looks like a painting. I let the various things of nature, leaves, grass, weeds and the like, dry and fade in the sunlight until they won't fade anymore. When they have reached this stage they are ready for use."

Harkening back to a Victorian art form, Stockton assembled botanical materials, such as barks, weeds, leaves, ferns, and twigs, which she used to construct realist landscapes: "My palette is composed of some two hundred and fifty types of colorful wild growing things from everywhere," On some of the backs of these pieces, she listed the organic elements and where she found them. Mounting the pieces to a board, she might include as many as 10,000 components, which were deftly arranged with attention paid to both their tonal value and texture, and her depictions of places like Mount of the Holy Cross, Gardens of the Gods, and Spruce Tree House at Mesa Verde are tours de force.

In 1941, Stockton moved to Santa Fe, where she accordingly introduced New Mexico subjects such as the oft-depicted Mission at Rancho de Taos, Indian figures, and Old Tesque Plaza. She became an authority on Native American lore as well as an honorary member of the Sioux. Becoming a well-known figure, Ponchita had numerous New Mexico exhibits and a work of hers appeared on the cover of New Mexico magazine in 1949.The following year, she married Howard W. Featheree. A national curiosity, she was the subject of five shorts, which show her at work her wearing colorful Western garb while a Sioux youth gathers materials. Stockton also was profiled on the popular fifties television show, "This Is Your Life".

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