Lin Hsin-yueh was born in Taichung City, Taiwan in 1939. He was orphaned at a very young age, as his father, sculptor Lin Kun-ming, died of typhoid before his birth and his mother died of malaria when he was only 5 years of age. As a result of the premature death of both his parents, Lin Hsin-yueh's childhood was marked by uncertainty, loneliness and poverty. He was taken into care first by his second uncle and then by his eldest uncle, before being sent away yet again to an orphanage following the bankruptcy of his relatives. Despite such difficult circumstances, Lin Hsin-yueh showed tremendous artistic talent at a young age and eventually followed the footsteps of his father to become an artist, graduating from the National Taiwan Normal University in 1965 with a degree in Fine Arts.

Following the lifting of the 40-year-long martial law in 1987, Taiwanese society began a surge to re-discover and re-establish its previously repressed native cultural identity. This newly gained cultural awareness allowed Lin Hsin-yueh to see the strength and beauty of his own heritage, prompting him to view his own life experience as well as the people and landscape that nurtured him in a new light. His oil painting, Gushing Waves (1994), features the spectacular sight of the waterfalls in New Zealand. This can be seen, however, to also echo the Gushing Waves passion of Taiwan's native cultural revival movements of the 1990s. The passion displayed in Lin Hsin-yueh's paintings can be seen not only as a direct reflection of the artist's own feelings and emotional states, but also as a powerful metaphor for the country's intense social-cultural mood swings.

Lin Hsin-yueh has always suffered a loss of identity and sense of belonging as a result of his struggle-filled upbringing. His fractured state of mind appears to also parallel with Taiwan's troubled and torrential recent history. Bleak yet poetic, Lin's early works often resort to surrealist approaches to articulate the artist's profound sense of loss of belonging. In 1976, Lin Hsin-yueh took a three-year-long study trip to Spain, where he witnessed the torrential democratization tide of Spain in the post-Franco era. This prompted him to re-examine his own country's past, present and future both in terms of general history and specifically art history. In 1978, Lin Hsin-yueh suffered a near-death experience as the flight he took was attacked by the Russian air forces and forced to land on an icebound lake in the Russian territory after it had erroneously trespassed the territory of the Soviet Union. Having survived this harrowing experience, Lin Hsin-yueh started to reflect on his social responsibility and duty as an artist. He has since dedicated himself to establishing a critical local perspective in his art criticism. His paintings of the 1980s also demonstrated a shift in art styles from surrealism to realist depictions of the Taiwanese landscapes. Over the years, Lin Hsin-yueh has created many giant-sized paintings depicting the spectacular scenery of Taiwan's mountains and waters that fully illustrate the strength and vitality of this country.