Li Shusen was born in Tianjin in 1943. His early works were mainly Western paintings. During the 1970s and 1980s, he created a large number of oil paintings, gouache paintings, and New Year paintings that have been published many times throughout the country. After 1984, he began to create Chinese paintings.

Over the years, Li Shusen has participated in more than 600 painting and calligraphy exhibitions and has won many awards. Among them, the film posters "Listening to Politics" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" were exhibited in the North China Film Propaganda Exhibition and won gold and silver awards respectively; the work "A Strip of Water" was approved by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the 30th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.