In 1994 he decided to dedicate himself full-time to the creation of his own paintings and after an initial foray with landscapes and portraits, Bernardi started concentrating on contemporary still life and turned towards a kind of realism closely associated to photorealism.
[4] In 2007 some of these paintings were exhibited at the Musei Capitolini in Rome and actioned by Sotheby's as a donation towards a humanitarian project in Uganda organized by the UNHCR.
[5][6][7] In 2008, Eliot Cutler, an American lawyer and politician, who was an independent candidate in Maine’s 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial races, invited Bernardi to Beijing to work on a commission.
[8] In 2010, Eni, the Italian multinational oil and gas company, currently Italy's largest industrial company, added Bernardi to the group of young artists from across the world who work to uniquely interpret each moment of Eni's communication and commissioned Bernardi to do a painting to be added to their art collections.
[9][10] In 2014 Bernardi was invited to exhibit in the “2014 Contemporary Realism Biennial” at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art[11] in the United States.