He began painting seriously in 1966 in Steveston High School due to the encouragement of a tough but sympathetic art teacher, Mrs Stavrakoff.
In 1985, he received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of Saskatchewan and completed the thesis component of his degree on the work of Claude Monet.
[2] Alexander draws inspiration for his work from the unique character of the land which he records in sketchbooks and sketches in preparation for more finished canvases.
[2] As a result, he has traveled extensively doing research for his work, including making trips to England, France, and the United States during his graduate research, and since then, travelling to the Arctic (1988), Scotland (to which he has gone several times), Iceland (1996, 2002), New Mexico and Arizona (1996), Nevada (2005), California (several visits as well), as well as making many trips to northern Ontario and Quebec, but he always combines his canonic subject matter (places without a great deal of human footprint) with abstraction.
Beginning in 2004 (after an initial inspiration in 2001), Alexander began to focus on water surfaces and their fleeting colour and light effects in his paintings.
In 2012, the exhibition David Alexander: The Shape of Place, curated by Liz Wylie for the Kelowna Art Gallery, went on a national tour.