Please ignore this – I finally got there!
For those who are interested, the working code is
<?php
$coverpages = array ('About', 'News', 'Jobs', 'Register');
foreach ($coverpages as $p) {
if ( !is_page($p) ) { echo "<a href='/$p/'>"; };
echo "<img src='";
bloginfo('template_directory');
echo "/images/" . $p . ".png' class='buttons ";
if ( !is_page($p) ) { echo ' hov'; };
echo "'/>";
if ( !is_page($p) ) { echo '</a>'; };
}
?>
Best, R