Born 1955 in Taipei,Taiwan,Yu Peng was trained in several art mediums. including pottery, illustration, traditional ink and oil painting. He never studied formally in a university, but from 1971 to 1975 he studied under master Chen Yigeng. During his three-year military service, Yu Peng traveled the island extensively producing a number of sketches of the small townships. In the late 1970s he sold his paintings, portraits and sketches to tourists. becoming the first street-based painter in Taiwan.

Yu Peng has developed a highly personal style of ink painting that is based in tradition but relates in subject to a contemporary audience. His brushwork is frequently unorthodox and simple, a quality that resembles the traditional literati aesthetics. His landscapes are often deliberately fragmented and disorderly. with human figures, animals and vegetation juxtaposed without any rational linkages.