Tony Bernardi

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Tony Bernardi (born July 14, 1959) is a published composer, artist, sculptor, and spiritualist who lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

He was born in Tehran, Iran to Mediterranean parents and grew up in a European community in Iran. He immigrated to the United States in his late teens. He received a science degree and studied music composition and art at the University of Maryland. He is the founder of HAP21, a company that promotes peace awareness through fine arts.

[edit] Background

Tony Bernardi's life-path in the arts was not a choice made in college. It seemed predetermined from early childhood. By the time Tony was in college he had reasonably claimed a unique artistic voice, and not only with paint and pencil, but with his music, poetry, and sculpture.

What distinguishes Tony Bernardi's artistic voice is an unexplainable mystical element that evokes the spirit in the observer. Tony's art, representational and seldom abstract, is preoccupied with story telling and often uses the human figure as its subject matter. Although he studied realistic representation of the figure using live models and copying such masters as Michelangelo and Rodin with reasonable success, his own unique voice and vision predominates all his works. This distinguishable style and manner of expression was recognized and encouraged by many of Tony's teachers all throughout his education.

What has overshadowed Tony Bernardi's artistic life in the past has been the challenges of normal life, childhood and societal conditionings, pursuit of making a respectable living through the sciences, viewing the arts as avocation and recreation, and the challenge of accepting one's gift. However, often a spiritual force and aim, strong as any survival instinct, saw him through many of life's challenges, deaths, traumas, and failures. Such fires that forge all of us melted and tempered his unique raw talents into transformational skills and strengthened his voice such that it could no longer be contained by the rewards of comfort and security.

Shortly after his father's death, and in his 28th year, Tony Bernardi began his active pursuit of understanding mysticism and spirituality. This 20 year pursuit exposed and educated him in many traditions ranging from Shamanism to Psychic development, and to “A Course in Miracles”, crystallizing his artistic expression. As a result Tony's work has achieved a deeper level of communication. Recognizing his gifts has led him to understand his art as an act of prayer or communing with the divine. Therefore, what perhaps began as an admiration for the human figure and a challenge to capture its beauty of form, have culminated into prayers for healing of the body. Similarly, fascination with the challenged and the dramatically dark has led him to understand the power of light. This understanding is evident in his earlier artworks, perhaps unconsciously created in the past; however today he has come to respect and communicates his spiritual understanding with an unmistakable light.

Tony Bernardi's spiritual life's service expanded through his intense study of A Course in Miracles, the Bible, various Eastern spiritual traditions, the works of Eckhart Tolle, and the Poetic works of Marshall Stewart Ball. In the year 2003 he met his dear teacher and beloved friend Marshall Stewart Ball and began his new path of service to humanity. This new chapter in his spiritual and artistic life resulted in the founding of HAP21 where he actively supports and collaborates with other artists in projects that promote peace awareness.