Memories, preservation and the language of communication is the key idea in Son’s works and he thrives to express the importance preservation in his own way through his artworks. In 2002, Son Il visited The Gansong Art Museum (Seoul, South Korea) and saw the original Hunminjeongeum (Hangeul, the Korean alphabet) . Touched with a myriad of emotions, he was sad about these original Hunminjeongeum woodblocks that were destroyed during the Korean War, and he was determined to bring such precious cultural heritage them back to life.
The most obvious feature in Son’s style is his openess towards the use of different materials, techniques and forms, which later brought about a progressive change to producing relief paintings by using briquette ash, along with repeated ‘trial and error’ with the adoption of Hanji (Korean traditional paper) and mulberry paper, terra cotta, ceramics, rice straws and other mixed-media forms. Through years of experimenting, Son developed diverse de-genre and convergent methodologies by combining figurativeness & abstraction, sculptures & paintings and paintings & ceramics.
