Born in the small market town of Horsham, West Sussex, Alexander came to painting relatively late, receiving his BFA from Oxford University as a mature student in 1996, despite his lack of formal education or training.
His art often reinvents the icons of the past, recasting such well-known cultural objects as the Shield of Achilles, Van Gogh's famous portrait of the French physician Paul Gachet, and ruined statues of saints in New College, Oxford.
This is due not to idleness but to a sort of manic fastidiousness.’ ‘The works of this self-taught artist combine elements of eighteenth-century classicism, nineteenth-century photography, and modern photo-realism.’[3] Alexander's portraits include ones of the contemporary British poet Craig Raine (b.
His recent copies of Van Gogh's notorious Portrait of Dr Gachet, in which he has siphoned off all of the colour of the original, replacing it with heavy black pigment, caused considerable controversy when exhibited in London in 2005.
Alexander's Red Mannheim altarpieces have been included in the 2010 St Paul's cathedral art programme along with Anthony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Bill Viola, Yoko Ono and others.