Mireille Andelu was born in Andelu, a small village in the Yvelines region of France, which would later give its name to her artistic identity. A self-taught artist, she spent many years alongside her husband, a painter and engraver, and it was within that world that she shaped her eye, her hand, and her sense of freedom. After an initial period devoted to ceramics, she spent twelve years printing the engravings of the renowned James Coignard before creating textile patterns. Yet it was painting—followed by engraving and sculpture—that ultimately became her preferred forms of expression.
Andelu explores a mixed technique combining plant-based pigments, tissue paper, sand, oil pastels, and sometimes powdered marble. She favors paper over canvas: “It’s more alive,” she says. The carborundum engraving technique, a demanding process invented by Henri Goetz, has become for her a vital creative space whose every gesture she masters. “My painting has no age. My painting un-engages me,” she says with a smile. And again: “Painting is silence turned into space. Listening to the work scrape the visible.”
