Portrait Honors Chip Duryea

Perry Duryea III was thanked by the Fighting Chance cancer organization at his restaurant on Tuthill Road overlooking Fort Pond Bay on Friday and presented with a portrait of himself painted by Paul Davis, a well-known artist and friend of Fighting Chance’s founder, Duncan Darrow.

Before the lunch began, Mr. Darrow said that when Mr. Davis offered to paint something for the organization that helps cancer patients navigate appointments, insurance, and other challenges, the staff decided the picture should be of a cancer survivor. Mr. Darrow immediately thought of Mr. Duryea, he said. “He’s a really great person.”

Mr. Duryea, who is known as Chip, fought colon cancer for almost seven years and is now cancer-free. Immediately after he started treatment, he founded a support group that meets at his restaurant monthly, except in July and August. He was also a Fighting Chance board member for several years and has hosted a late-summer or early-fall lunch at the restaurant for six years.

Mr. Davis drove to the hamlet to visit Mr. Duryea in early summer and took many photographs, at every angle of his face, and familiarized himself with the dockside surroundings. The finished painting is a likeness of Mr. Duryea, with seagulls overhead. His eyes match the light blue of the shirt he is wearing in the portrait.

Mr. Davis painted two pictures of Mr. Duryea, one for his office in the fish house, and the other to be placed in the Fighting Chance office in Sag Harbor. That painting is slightly different, with a Fighting Chance logo in navy blue on an orange life ring above Mr. Duryea’s right shoulder.

When the two paintings were unveiled, a murmur went through the crowd.

“It really reflects Chip,” Mr. Darrow said. Karrie Zampini Robinson, the director of Fighting Chance’s clinical program and its oncology social care worker, said she could see in the portrait Mr. Duryea’s resilience and kindness.