> To me this is exactly the kind of mental burden that I had to painfully unlearn before I could start improving in the ways of art, and reconstruct a mental model of how things actually work.

Light strikes objects in a scene; generally speaking, at each illuminated point reflected light radiates away in all directions, a sphere (subject to caveats: occlusion, unequal strength in all directions). Rays from each point reach the viewer's eyes, where the lenses of the eye project the image onto the retina. This image is then interpreted by the brain.

To create an image, you are doing one of two things: either you take this three-dimensional scene, project it onto an imaginary two-dimensional plane in front of the viewer, and render a (generally planar) artifact which reflects similar colors and light -- that is, your painting. (You will be subject to various challenges, like mismatched lighting that reflects from that painting, materials limitations, resolution limitations.)

OR...

Reverse-engineer the brain itself, such that it perceives things in a similar way, despite a difference in the actual rendered image.