One of the founding members of Professional Native Artists Inc. (PNIAI), Eddy Cobiness was invited by Daphne Odjig to join the groundbreaking group. Odjig and his fellow members held him in great esteem: Odjig called him “a beautiful painter”; Alex Janvier remembered that “Eddy was like the consciousness of the group ... the native thinking that he brought in, the spiritual ... Sometimes we went too far and he would bring us back to earth, you know”; and Joseph Sanchez similarly described Cobiness as a traditionalist who “kept the Group members on a more spiritual path.” [1] Cobiness’s work stands apart from that of many of his PNIAI colleagues, and from much of the Woodland School more broadly, in its more representational approach.

Painted with the grace akin to the silk of a spider’s weave, White Tailed Deer and Grouse is carried by an exceptionally fine, searching line. Cobiness lets the deer remain almost weightless, building the body from pale grey contours, dotted passages, and small dark accents rather than heavy outline. The legs, antlers, grasses, and birds are all drawn with the same airy restraint, so the whole image seems to hover on the paper.