In America’s rich history of art and publishing, the cartoonist occupies a unique place, an often misunderstood element.

From the simple ‘funnies’ of the weekend newspapers, to the cultural critics of New Yorker magazine, the cartoonist is at once both clown and columnist.

The best cartoons become social artifacts, and can help us see the oddity in our own time with a humor like no other art form.

James Thurber, Charles Barsotti, George Booth, Mary Petty and Barney Tobey, are some of the great American cartoonists who have turned their pens to strange and wonderful ways of the world.

Though largely unheralded in his own lifetime, the work of Denis C. Bourland contributes to this great tradition.

Last week The Reporter took a phone call from a lady who said that her husband was an artist and had drawn many cartoons.

She inquired whether we would like to have a look.

“No one outside the family has ever seen them,” she said.

A few days later Marcia Bourland, Issaquah resident and self-confessed hermit, arrived at The Reporter offices.

She carried with her three large portfolios, each filled with the intricate, funny and poignant work of her late husband Denis.

The story of Denis and Marcia Bourland is a partnership in art.

They met in their 20s, when Marcia was studying painting at the Corchoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Denis was doing his Master of Fine Arts at American University.

From that moment on, the map of their lives was drawn out by paintbrush and pencil, teaching and studying art in cities and towns across the country.

In the early 1970s, they found themselves in Astoria, Oregon, where they painted in a studio above an old fish canning factory on the Columbia River, when they weren’t building a cabin out in the woods, or substitute teaching to earn a living.

They also had a small gallery, but it didn’t make very much money, Marcia said.

All the time Denis continued to paint, sketch, etch and make ceramics, a naturally gifted artist with a seemingly limitless well of creativity.

“Cezanne was the artist that he admired most,” Marcia said.

“He loved all the impressionists.

“These cartoons he just would do in the evening, as he was sitting down and watching television.

“He would take one night to do the pencil sketch, and then the next night he would apply the ink.”

To see the works, it is amazing to think they could be done in two evenings.

Many of the works were so large and intricate that they could not be effectively resized and reproduced for The Reporter.

But they all display Denis love of American history, his views on its society and culture, and a quiet sense of humor that Marcia said was one of the things she loved about him the most.

“It was the subtle things that made him laugh, the little things. He wasn’t a knee-slapping type, but saw things in a much more subtle, unique way,” she said.

One of her favorite cartoons is one of Abraham Lincoln at the scene of the Gettysburg Address, confiding in one of his advisors, “I don’t know why we don’t just call it 87 years?”

It is clear that the cartoons, and the strong sense of Denis that they portray, are a source of great pride and comfort to his wife.

A widower now, Marcia still feels deeply the loss of her husband, who passed away in 1993.

“I miss him very much,” she said.

Marcia moved to Issaquah a few years ago to be close to her family.

Just as great art outlives those who created it, presenting a timeless view of the world for future generations, so to does the work of Denis C. Bourland keep alive the creative energy and humor of an extraordinary artist.