Hidden away in a dingy motel room, a cunning tattooist and painter taunts the efforts of a special detective when she reveals to a budding local reporter how a lust for fame, a little girl and her own lost love made her the Deadly Canvas Killer.

SYNOPSIS:

Eliza Hellina is the daughter of the late industrialists, Richard and Mary Hellina and the owner of Dying Art Tattoo Studios. An egotistical and tortured artist with a lust for fame and artistic immortality. After leaving her conventional fine art gallery job during a turbulent crisis of conscience she uses part of her inheritance, immediately puts a down payment on a commercial property and pre-maturely starts her tattoo shop, despite the concern of her closest friends. Perhaps out of spite to her former employer Eliza succeeds in hiring artists and opening a shop. The Grand Opening is a success but as Eliza is cleaning the shop that night there is a break in and she ends up killing the two intruders, one in self-defence but the other was shot in the back as they tried to flee with a painting. Panicked and frustrated, she decides to hide the, now, double murder. Upon examining the bodies she discovers that one intruder is, Brian, a man she had tattooed earlier that day. He has Eliza’s tattooing debut, a fresh piece of art, on his body and now it threatens to be wasted, buried or burned. She is furious and in a fit of rage decides to hide their bodies on crown land - but not before carving out his tattoo to preserve her art. She stretches the skin over a frame in a fit of insanity and puts it up in her tattoo studio. The piece is a raging success and sells to Eliza’s former employer for a hefty sum, validating her work and igniting Eliza’s muse for human skin stretched over a wooden frame.

Eliza is hooked and as she finds more and more victims to satiate her "creative materials" and lust for fame a terrifying narrative begins to develop in the small community of Heyde’s Valley. A murderer is on the loose, “The Deadly Canvas Killer.” No one suspects Eliza, not even her closest friends and employees but soon things start to get complicated for Eliza as a new special detective is brought to town to solve the case and her “lover,” Zane, betrays her as an informant for her parents murder. In her quest for vengeance and fame Eliza comes across a young girl, Mia, who challenges Eliza’s sociopathic nature and starts Eliza on a more honourable and compassionate path of killing to rid the world of evil, all while continuing to pursue her lust for fame and artistic immortality.

Eliza continues to exact her justice and wrath on all those she deems worthy with little regard for consequence, yet, an oddly calculated and methodological ease, even when it comes to the betrayal of her love by Zane. Eliza continues to foster an almost motherly relationship with Mia throughout the first season providing Mia with law textbooks so she can study the "perfect murder," motivation to be brave and bold at school and checking in on her time to time at her various foster homes to make sure she’s being treated well. Soon, the special detective Vieta Qadira is getting close and forces Eliza to flee the city with Mia. However, Eliza won't leave until she can reveal her whole story to the reporter James. Will Vieta catch them in time or will the "Deadly Canvas Killer" continue her beautiful path of destruction?

DEADLY CANVAS BY SARAH SELNES & NICK BOHLE