Sixty years ago the Alexanders - then living in Oberon - made the trip to Mount Panorama for a car race and Mr Alexander, aged four at the time, remembers a drawing competition he had with his brother after the races.

"I can clearly remember after our first trip to the Mount Panorama car races, travelling home to Oberon perched on the rear parcel shelf of our Holden FB, in the afterglow of the visceral thrill of the noise and speed," he recalls.

"I had never seen or felt anything like it.

"My big brother and I had a drawing competition not long after. My father, Cam, judged my drawing the winner as I had captured 'speed'."

The Alexander family would later move to Bathurst in 1962 and Mr Alexander remembers fondly one of his teachers making the most of his artistic ability.

"In sixth class at Bathurst Public School, my teacher had me paint a series of images, including former British prime minister Winston Churchill, a digger, and a tank for a class project while the other children did schoolwork," he said.

By 1968, Mr Alexander was off to boarding school, at Sydney's Cranbrook School, and after completing the Higher School Certificate in 1973, he enrolled at the National Art School where in three years, "they taught me nothing".

"They were all abstract. I like pictures of things," he said.

"I wanted art training, technical training. They were all abstract painters and teachers.

"They were contemptuous of figurativism and negative stuff. They didn't view me as an artist because I didn't act like me."

After art school, he went travelling before landing a job at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1984.

"A neighbour of mine was the letters editor at the Sydney Morning Herald and that's how my work was picked up," he said.

As a result, Mr Alexander's illustrations started appearing in the letters to the editor section to illustrate the subject matter of certain letters.

He would later branch out into illustrating for the paper's other columns and news pieces.

"It varied from really light things like cuisine to serious things like the Rodney King bashing," he said.

Mr Alexander would go on to leave the Herald and move on to work as an illustrator for The Australian from 1996 to 2010.

In 2001, Mr Alexander bought a house in the shadow of Mount Panorama/Wahluu, an inspiration for many of his artworks, but while he owned a house in Bathurst it wasn't until 2017 he returned home permanently.

Since returning to Bathurst, his artwork has returned to his "first principles".

"I've returned to my first principles, drawing my environment en plein air, with eucalyptus gum and local reed pens," he said.

"My work developed to embrace hybrid gum, CMY, Namatjira/Battarbee and masking fluid watercolours, and then progressed on to pure CMY synthetic polymer paint on canvas paintings.

"My continued fascination with Wahluu and the surrounding Bathurst landscape recently inspired me to develop larger-scale oil paintings with more overt narrative content.

"I am looking forward to embarking on the marriage of my watercolour discoveries with the much broader range of effects achievable with oil paints."

Currently, Mr Alexander is one of four artists that have an exhibition running at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.

His is titled Jock Alexander: Of This Place, featuring artworks inspired by Mount Panorama/Wahluu, motor racing and local fauna and flora.

The four exhibitions will run until December 6. For more information, visit www.bathurstart.com.au.