楊茂林（1953–）自1970年代開始從事藝術創作迄今四十餘年，他崛起於狂飆的1980年代，見證了1990年代台灣當代藝術的興起，更歷經二十一世紀全球化的全面性開展。創作初期楊茂林受到西方超前衛的啟發與影響，毅然脫離學院既有的樣式與題材，致力激發繪畫再生的可能性。難能可貴的是，他依托自身的文化底蘊，跳出西方議題發展的框架，建構出本土化敘事的藝術特質。



　　Born in 1953, Yang Mao-Lin has been making art since the 1970s. In this interval spanning more than 40 years, he came to prominence as an artist in the turbulence of the 1980s, witnessed the flowering of Taiwanese contemporary art in the 1990s, and went through the comprehensive development of globalization in the 21st century. In his early period, Yang was influenced by the Italian Transavanguardia movement, and strove to bring forth new possibilities in painting by shedding paradigms of academic art. Especially admirable is that he relied on the deep spirit of his own culture and broke through western frameworks to construct a local art narrative.