A painter comes to realize that there is line and then shape. Line traces the train of thought. Shape is at first a thinking of line until it becomes so broad as to cause the line to be forgotten. For line has direction but when it becomes broad it can negate the original direction, even entirely, until no direction is understood. At this point, if one isn’t careful, the painting can become a tool for epikorus, Heaven forbid. Because line, as said, first expresses a train of thought. It is linked to letter and word, which is linear expression. Word is heard in time. One sound after the next—this is linear. But picture is seen all at once, it is above time—therefore, it is above time in holiness (kedusha) or the opposite, Heaven forbid.
For the Jew is bound to word. We act out the truth of Hashem’s words of Torah. He directs our actions by the commandments of the Torah which are on the simple level understood mainly through word. We abide by these words, attempt to fulfill these words to the fullest. We cannot move from these words. Even the person on the highest spiritual level still never moves from the the simple meaning of the Directives of the Holy Torah.
Therefore, a Jewish painter must never move from the linear aspect of painting which is linked to the words from which the train of his thought must never waver. He cannot allow his mind to drift into amorphous shapes in which the direction of such voyage becomes unknown to him.
This is davka the ways of false beliefs—to entice a person’s mind into amorphous areas where his conscience is left behind and his sense of direction has been lost. Once he is in the realm of imagination he can hear, Heaven forbid, messages that are entirely false yet he has no way of measuring them.
A Jew must never lose his direction. Even though he must strive to transcend the simple meaning of the Torah and connect himself with her deeper aspects, until he becomes bound to the Creator, blessed is He, Himself; nevertheless, this path is only through never losing his connection to the simple meaning of the Directives of his life. Otherwise, Heaven forbid, he can become bound to empty illusions which he calls G-d, but are nothing but bitter emptiness and wretched deception.