Li Ming-tse was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1957. He studied arts and crafts at Kun-shan Trade and Arts School and graduated in 1977. He won the New Comer of the Year at the Lions Arts Awards in 1981 with his Chinese Style series, and has subsequently taken part in the 2nd Asia-Pacifi c Triennial (Brisbane, Australia, 1996), the 47th Venice Biennial – Taiwan Pavilion (Venice, Italy, 1997) and Asia Triennial (Fukuoka, Japan, 2002). Since childhood, Li Ming-tse has always been most captivated by the mythical world of Wu-Xia (i.e. martial arts). In fact, his passion for art was predominantly inspired by the heroic stories told in popular novels, fi lms and comic books such as The Heroes of the Marshes, Romance of Three Kingdoms, Seven Knights and Five Heroes, Little Hero and fi lms in the Western genre such as A Fistful of Dollars. These, joined by elements of popular Taiwanese folk arts such as shadow play, glover puppetry and Sung-Chiang Battle Array, have all had considerable infl uence on Li Ming-tse's art.

Growing up in the military community in Zuoying, Kaohsiung, Li Ming-tse has been able to closely observe every detail of the Lotus Pond just near by. His painting, Lotus Pond in Zuoying, features various local landmarks which tell stories from various belief systems including Taoism, Buddhism and popular Taiwanese legends. These include, for example, the statue of Guanyin on the horseback at Spring-and-Autumn Pavilion, the Dragon-and-Tiger Tower, the statue of Chingshui Master on the top of the Chingshui Palace, the Confucian Temple as well as the statue of the God-Emperor of Heaven at the North Pole Pavilion. To make his work even more fascinating, Li Ming-tse occasionally adds elements of fantasy and humor to the narrative, creating a wonderful vibrant world of myth and imagination. Not only that, the work also reveals the artist's acute observation of social realities in Taiwan.

The late 1980s saw Li Ming-tse shifting his focus to depicting, in a simple, straightforward, even childlike style, his own life experiences and spiritual journey. Through his paintings of rural nostalgia, Li creates a surreal world of Zen-like tranquility and Taiwanese nativist sentiments. In the 1990s, Li Ming-tse painted a series of “faces” as part of his exploration of human nature – an effort perhaps best exemplifi ed in his Rising Thoughts series (1995), which feature portraits of religious fi gures and fi ctional characters in various different expressions to signify human emotions and feelings such as love, hate, greed, anger and obsession. Drawing heavily on the artist's personal experience and social observations, Li's works after the Rising Thoughts series also offer a rich vein of insight into human weakness and failings.