Manuel Ocampo now lives in Berkeley, California. He moved to Seattle in his teens and then studied art at CSU Bakersfield. His work embodies the inherent conflicts of a Philipino immigrant. Love for his native country, which endured centuries of Spanish rule, is wedded to his ambivalent feelings towards his adopted country and the pervasive American influence in the Philippines.

Manuel Ocampo works in the updated tradition of past political allegorists. In exuberant works reminiscent of but not nostalgic for folk paintings, Ocampo's blending of high and low culture, academic and popular, the sacred and secular, image and text supercharge canvases with a blatant disregard for stylistic and idiomatic consistency.

The artist's 2001 show, Those Long Dormant Pimples of Inattention Meandering Through the Cranium Arcade of Pitiless Logic Swastikating Between Love and Hate, at the Jack Shainman Gallery, is ridden with slang-based humor.