Alexander travelled extensively in Britain and continental Europe, though during the latter part of her life spent more and more time in Scotland's Hebridean islands. After attending the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 and Hitler's notorious Exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' in Munich in 1937, she became an avid and lifelong exhibition-goer, retaining a strong international outlook and a particular interest in European and American modernism. The sheer variety of her work, and the influences she documented in her publication Sources of 20th Century Art, run counter to later attempts to pigeon-hole her as a typical small-scale English landscape painter.