Esteban Longoria, 33

Longoria’s haunting paintings of masked figures, each an unearthly blend of stuffed animal and monstrosity, spring from many sources: Mexican wrestlers, Velazquez’s paintings of equestrians, and the cultural influences of his Irish/Filipino mother, Mexican father, and Jamaican wife. Then there was the dark fate of a neighbor growing up in Galveston, Texas, a developmentally delayed man whose mother died of cancer and whose father, Longoria says, “committed suicide on the front porch. We were all out playing. He was out crossing the street a few weeks later, and he was hit by a truck.’’ Longoria’s big canvases capture that clash of innocence and violence.