Herman Cherry (1909-1992) was a vital part of the legendary New York School of painters, and like many in his generation, migrated away from figurative expression to abstraction beginning in the mid-1940s. Most writing about Cherry situates him among America’s celebrated abstract and color field artists. Less discussed are the artists—like Mark Tobey and Clyfford Still—whose approach to abstraction never abandoned a representational referent, most especially nature. They embraced what Wassily Kandinsky called “the spirit,” a need to express in color and form one’s inner self, without which there is no art. Equally influential in the years before the Second World War was Los Angeles-based artist and theorist Stanton Macdonald-Wright, who co-conceived Synchromy, a method for using color based on optical and musical principles. Cherry’s interest in nature and his training under Macdonald-Wright in color theory during the 1930s distinguish him from the traditional New York School.…