Belinder art teacher Wendy Taylor is the recipient of this year’s Shawnee Mission School District faculty art purchase award, the district announced earlier this month.

Each year, the board of education attends the district faculty art show and selects one painting to buy and hand in the administration building. Taylor’s painting of a scene from the Plaza caught the board’s eye, and she won the $500 prize.

Taylor has been teaching in the district for 26 years, and at Belinder for 16. She paints in oils, pastels and watercolors, and said she chooses subjects that are “meaningful to me or warm my heart in some way.”