DEVIL'S PEAK PAINTED BY ANDREW COOPER

ANDREW COOPER  (bn. 1967) 

Devil's Peak  (1,000 m - 3,300 ft) 

 South Africa

 In  Devil's Peak, oil on canvas

The mountain 
 Devil's Peak  (1,000 m - 3,300 ft) less high than Table Mountain (1,087 m- 3,566 ft) is part of the mountainous backdrop to Cape Town, South Africa. When looking at Table Mountain from the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, or when looking at the standard picture postcard view of the mountain, the skyline is from left to right: the spire of Devil's Peak, the flat mesa of Table Mountain, the dome of Lion's Head and Signal Hill.
Forty years before Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape in 1497, the Venetian cartographer Fra Mauro created a map of the world for King Alfonso V of Portugal, based on knowledge drawn from the Arabians. On this map, which became the definitive view of the world for the early Portuguese explorers, he named the southernmost tip of Africa, Cabo di Diab – the Devil’s Cape. It’s very likely the association with the Devil simply migrated from the Cape to the mountain that flanks it. After all, sailors are a superstitious lot and Devil’s Peak remains the path through which the Cape Southeaster howls, churning up the waves in the Cape of Storms.
The upper, rocky parts of Devil's Peak, Table Mountain and Lion's Head consist of a hard, uniform and resistant sandstone commonly known as the Table Mountain sandstone or TMS.  The tough sandstone rests conformably upon a basal shale that in turn lies unconformably upon a basement of older (Late Precambrian) rocks (Malmesbury shale/slate and the Cape Granite). Millions of years of erosion have stripped all of the TMS from Signal Hill and that is why it looks very rounded compared to its sister peaks. There is a road that runs almost on the contour from the lower cable station on Table Mountain along the mountain to Devil's Peak. As it turns east around the bulk of Devil's Peak the road cuttings expose a few famous geological unconformities, which illustrate very clearly that the Malmesbury rocks were folded, baked, intruded by granite and planed down by millions of years of erosion before the area sank below the ocean and a new sequence of sediments, including the TMS, began to accumulate.
One can walk to the top (western slopes provide the easiest approach) but the ascent is more pleasant and safer outside of the cold, wet, winter months of May to August.
Source:
 - City of Cape town 

The artist
South African artist Andrew Cooper is a contemporary mountains and landscape  painter.  Born in Cape Town, South Africa in November, 1967, Andrew is a gifted, self taught fine artist, who started painting professionally in 1987. He prefers to work on large scale landscape paintings and seascape paintings allowing the viewer to experience "the grandeur and depth of the scene".
Living in a region rich in breathtaking scenery, he has created a spectacular body of contemporary South African paintings that has been exhibited throughout South Africa and elsewhere around the world.  The 2004 International Art Expo in New York City marked his premiere major American exhibition. His  paintings have also been exhibited in the United Kingdom, most recently in June 2012 (Westcliffe Gallery in Norfolk). Andrew Cooper is devoted to painting much as he is devoted to exploring the vast and spectacular countryside of South Africa. His paintings of the mountainside, seaside, wine country, and the rich grasslands are a testament to his sincere appreciation of nature. . His sharp eye and keen memory for detail caught every nuance of the scenes which played out in glorious colours before him. It was not long before he took paint to canvas and duplicated the glory of nature in its heights of beauty, thereby creating a lasting legacy of Nature's finest moments.
Source: 
- Andrew Cooper website